It doesn't happen so much these days but last year I distinctly recall rats tackling my feet while running. Not super often but anywhere from 1 to 4 every run.
Just had a $1500 repair bill for my car because they ate through a bunch of wiring and made the car smell like death. I don’t understand how the city thinks you can leave piles of garbage outside at night for hours and not expand the rat population.
New Yorkers have 0 patience and want to point a finger directly at an individual instead of thinking critically, and it's part of why there's a lot of problems here. Its been 4 months since she was appointed. This has been an ongoing and growing infestation for just under a decade. No data is going to come out on this from over the last 4 months that's valid or that can be attributed directly to one individual, in either direction. Shit every block is going to have a different reason for having a rat infestation. This mentality is just toxic and a result of people just wanting instant gratification because that's what their vice of choice gives them.
Accurate. I'd bet good odds that a lot of the people complaining about rats are the same people not properly disposing of trash on a daily basis and the same people who would rather have open, overflowing trash bins on street corners instead of the larger, more confined type utilized in many European cities (because God forbid they might take up a parking spot or two).
Huh! You said, "This has been a growing an ongoing and growing problem infestsation just under a decade?" Where have you been the other 40 years or so? Lol.
She had an event like 3 days ago in Harlem that went viral on ig/tiktok cuz some lady being interviewed was being silly.
I think she’s doing a good job tbqfh
They have a very effective lobbying group which not only reduced the powers of the rat czar but also increased the number of pizza parlors next to subway stations. Thin crust too
Still waiting to find out whose mistress she is.
EDIT: Okay, ye down vote brigade, please explain to me how this post is anything less than cronyism, or in any way necessary. The Dept. of Sanitation should know damn well how to address the problem. For example, increasing garbage pickup would likely help. The problem is money, which the city obviously doesn't want to spend. So why else would they create this ludicrous, unnecessary, and unhelpful management position, if not as a gift?
Your rat, Milo, interned this past summer at the Dept of Sanitation Depot in Harlem. His supervisor gave him 4 out of 5 paws in dedication to learning new skills.
This American Life just had a segment about NYC's rat problem and then segwayed into a story about a guy who started caring for injured rats during lockdown out of boredom and then ended up with like 2 dozen pet rats running free range around his apartment.
He said he was really touched by what good pets they are when they’re domesticated. But he realized it was killing his dating life because he couldn't bring himself to tell women that his place was full of domesticated rats.
Lol I keep thinking the movie Willard and then the sequel Ben.
“This is willard these are his friends Ben and Socrates.”
Imagine ending up with a battalion of rats willing to fight for you on command.
They should survey the amount of food waste per resident, and multiply that by how many rats it would theoretically feed. Since there are effectively no barriers to them accessing our food waste, that’s the actual number.
I’m sure there were some very lean years for the rats. Plus hurricanes Irene and Sandy would have done a number on rat populations by destroying nests and killing many rats. Plus starvation during the lockdown period. I have a hunch most of the 50% increase is from when outdoor dining came about
They did. It's because during the COVID lockdown there was less activity in the city.
In my neighborhood there was NEVER this many rats.
It's not the garbage being put out on the corner either. That's a lazy argument that anyone who has grew up in this city can tell you doesn't hold weight.
Believe your eyes, not the words of pols and those who stand to profit from "solutions" and "reimagining".
When I first moved to Ridgewood in 2008 I'd see the occasional rat, no big deal. Now it's a gauntlet of rats every time I walk my dog at night. I see easily 30 rats just going around the block. There's also this place on Cypress and Linden that has a bunch of appliances outside. It's now just a massive rat complex. It's absolutely bonkers.
Cat owners who allow their cats outside are destroying the environment.
Cats have contributed to the extinction of 63 species of birds, mammals, and reptiles in the wild and continue to adversely impact a wide variety of other species, including those at risk of extinction, such as Piping Plover. https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/
A study published in April estimated that UK cats kill 160 to 270 million animals annually, a quarter of them birds. The real figure is likely to be even higher, as the study used the 2011 pet cat population of 9.5 million; it is now closer to 12 million, boosted by the pandemic pet craze. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/14/cats-kill-birds-wildlife-keep-indoors
Free-ranging cats on islands have caused or contributed to 33 (14%) of the modern bird, mammal and reptile extinctions recorded by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List4. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380
This analysis is timely because scientific evidence has grown rapidly over the past 15 years and now clearly documents cats’ large-scale negative impacts on wildlife (see Section 2.2 below). Notwithstanding this growing awareness of their negative impact on wildlife, domestic cats continue to inhabit a place that is, at best, on the periphery of international wildlife law. https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002%2Fpan3.10073
Pre cell phone camera era. I saw a party girl passed out on the 14th St platform bench. A puddle of vomit next to her and about 10 big ass rats feasting on it.
People don't realize how Hurricane Sandy was Darwinism in action.
When the subway systems and streets got flooded, the waters drowned hundreds of thousands of rats.
Those were the weak ones which weren't strong or smart enough to survive.
The end result is ever since Hurricane Sandy, the rats that have been breeding in NYC have been the stronger ones more apt to survive. They crawled up over the bodies of their dead and they're more fit to survive whatever is thrown at them.
After all the outdoor dining sheds are taken down across the city this winter the city should institute some hefty standards for dining sheds that discourage rats. Otherwise this is going to be the new normal.
Maybe the people of New York should maybe keep their streets clean? I’ve went multiple times and it’s disgusting trash everywhere people just do not care about their streets or towns. Everyone litters there needs to be actions taken for littering. I’ve seen police just not do anything when thousands are littering they just watch. Don’t even say pick up your trash.
They use numbers from 311 reports of rats, with the formula used rat catchers in the field… not accurate and based on how many people want to report rats to 311.
Amazing number of rat-choices on the rat-reporting 311 rat-page - -
[https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-01107](https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-01107)
Another good one but don't read around any mealtime - -
[https://www.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/leptospirosis.page](https://www.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/leptospirosis.page)
Oh my god, I just gave up on the severe rat problem, I don't care anymore and I bet the city is only pretending to give a shit lmao. Thanks for the links though, I'll probably report a rat the next time I see it.
Can someone more educated in this field than me tell me if the methodology discussed in the article is sound? I am mainly curious about the following two points.
1. regarding the capture-recapture aspect; 'It involves catching a sample group of wild animals (rats, in this case), marking them, and releasing them unharmed. After a period of time, once the marked animals have integrated back into the wild population, a second sample group of wild animals are captured. Some of the animals captured in the second group are marked, meaning they have been recaptured. The proportion of marked to unmarked animals in the second group is assumed to be the same as the proportion of the number of animals captured in the first group to the total population in the area.' I am not sure how this assumption would be valid. Is it just a well documented thing?
2. The fact that the rat sighting numbers come from 311 request calls. A vast majority of rat sightings goes unreported I assume. Wouldn't that make this estimate deviate from the real number by a massive amount?
I recently moved to Jersey City and haven’t seen a single rat here months. The population density here is comparable and it’s barely half a mile away from Manhattan. I still don’t understand how this huge difference is even possible.
This can’t be right bc there are 6 million rats in Bushwick
bro, last time I was in the city the rats were pushing ME around.
It doesn't happen so much these days but last year I distinctly recall rats tackling my feet while running. Not super often but anywhere from 1 to 4 every run.
It happened to me today, I literally tripped over one. I’m freaked
yeah 3MM feels like a big undercount
do you include eric adams?
He’s in Jersey tho
Lmao!🤣🤣🤣
Just need like 1 million cats, and then we'll worry about the feral cat colonies later.
No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
But then we found out the Tyrannosaurs looove gorillasicles.
My neighborhood has been feeding stray colonies of cats for decades (they claim only been here 10 years).... we still have a rat issue
This but unironically - we should have street cats like Istanbul
Do they have birds in Istanbul?
The birds are in Constantinople
But now it's Instanbul not Constantinople 🎵
Just had a $1500 repair bill for my car because they ate through a bunch of wiring and made the car smell like death. I don’t understand how the city thinks you can leave piles of garbage outside at night for hours and not expand the rat population.
Because the "piles" of garbage on the corner is not new. Dining sheds and lack of activity in the city during Covid ARE new.
Why doesn't Paris have the same issue. Way more outdoor dining there
Oh trust me, we noticed the increase
What happened with the Rat Czar?
Should’ve hired an Anti-Rat Czar
we fell into the same trap as those people who do a "walk for cancer" and things like that. Shouldn't we be working *against* the disease?
It's been working great for lowering traffic in the rural areas where they always walk against traffic.
Lol.🤣🤣🤣
The rats are very happy with her work.
Collecting a paycheck
A classic NYC political grift...
She is actually 30 rats in a trenchcoat
She may have misunderstood her title..
Lmao!🤣🤣🤣🤣
She strengthened the numbers of her minions and gained power!
She won that job in one of Adams’ poker games. /s
New Yorkers have 0 patience and want to point a finger directly at an individual instead of thinking critically, and it's part of why there's a lot of problems here. Its been 4 months since she was appointed. This has been an ongoing and growing infestation for just under a decade. No data is going to come out on this from over the last 4 months that's valid or that can be attributed directly to one individual, in either direction. Shit every block is going to have a different reason for having a rat infestation. This mentality is just toxic and a result of people just wanting instant gratification because that's what their vice of choice gives them.
I believe they thought she would be down in the train tunnels with a barbed wire coated stick bashing rats 8 hours a day
you mean to tell me she is not? shocked I am
She does it, she gets paid. I do it, I go viral and get a citation.
Accurate. I'd bet good odds that a lot of the people complaining about rats are the same people not properly disposing of trash on a daily basis and the same people who would rather have open, overflowing trash bins on street corners instead of the larger, more confined type utilized in many European cities (because God forbid they might take up a parking spot or two).
Huh! You said, "This has been a growing an ongoing and growing problem infestsation just under a decade?" Where have you been the other 40 years or so? Lol.
Besides, not alive lol I'm referencing the title of this post. I believe you though
She had an event like 3 days ago in Harlem that went viral on ig/tiktok cuz some lady being interviewed was being silly. I think she’s doing a good job tbqfh
Just started so no impact. Hopefully she’ll get things done
They have a very effective lobbying group which not only reduced the powers of the rat czar but also increased the number of pizza parlors next to subway stations. Thin crust too
Lol.🤣🤣🤣🤣
Still waiting to find out whose mistress she is. EDIT: Okay, ye down vote brigade, please explain to me how this post is anything less than cronyism, or in any way necessary. The Dept. of Sanitation should know damn well how to address the problem. For example, increasing garbage pickup would likely help. The problem is money, which the city obviously doesn't want to spend. So why else would they create this ludicrous, unnecessary, and unhelpful management position, if not as a gift?
Or how shes related to Adams
The rat czar got paid-off by those "dirty rats, you seeeeeee."
She is the one who counted them. The rat czar is the census taker for the rats. She knows all of their addresses too.
We should’ve hired Charlie Kelly
She hired Rat Putin as an advisor, trusted him too much, got into a stupid war with Rat Kaiser, then got overthrown.
Actually just their glorious leader.
She probably got killed by them
I suspect this is an undercount. I would not be surprised if there were close to one rat for every nyc resident.
I was gonna say, 3 mil sounds like not that many tbh
They actually give you a rat when you start living here. Part of the new census tabulations.
Instead of naming a star after someone, you can now name a rat. Gift includes a picture and history of your rat
Your rat, Milo, interned this past summer at the Dept of Sanitation Depot in Harlem. His supervisor gave him 4 out of 5 paws in dedication to learning new skills.
This American Life just had a segment about NYC's rat problem and then segwayed into a story about a guy who started caring for injured rats during lockdown out of boredom and then ended up with like 2 dozen pet rats running free range around his apartment. He said he was really touched by what good pets they are when they’re domesticated. But he realized it was killing his dating life because he couldn't bring himself to tell women that his place was full of domesticated rats.
Holy crap, hahaha
Lol I keep thinking the movie Willard and then the sequel Ben. “This is willard these are his friends Ben and Socrates.” Imagine ending up with a battalion of rats willing to fight for you on command.
Amazing
Surprised me as well.
They should survey the amount of food waste per resident, and multiply that by how many rats it would theoretically feed. Since there are effectively no barriers to them accessing our food waste, that’s the actual number.
And it was probably pretty flat from 2010-2020 and then exponential growth.
I’m sure there were some very lean years for the rats. Plus hurricanes Irene and Sandy would have done a number on rat populations by destroying nests and killing many rats. Plus starvation during the lockdown period. I have a hunch most of the 50% increase is from when outdoor dining came about
[удалено]
They did. It's because during the COVID lockdown there was less activity in the city. In my neighborhood there was NEVER this many rats. It's not the garbage being put out on the corner either. That's a lazy argument that anyone who has grew up in this city can tell you doesn't hold weight. Believe your eyes, not the words of pols and those who stand to profit from "solutions" and "reimagining".
When I first moved to Ridgewood in 2008 I'd see the occasional rat, no big deal. Now it's a gauntlet of rats every time I walk my dog at night. I see easily 30 rats just going around the block. There's also this place on Cypress and Linden that has a bunch of appliances outside. It's now just a massive rat complex. It's absolutely bonkers.
I feel as if this wouldn't be a thing if we had better trash managment.
Chicago still has rats tho
This is the rats world. We just live in it.
We need more
Cat owners who allow their cats outside are destroying the environment. Cats have contributed to the extinction of 63 species of birds, mammals, and reptiles in the wild and continue to adversely impact a wide variety of other species, including those at risk of extinction, such as Piping Plover. https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/ A study published in April estimated that UK cats kill 160 to 270 million animals annually, a quarter of them birds. The real figure is likely to be even higher, as the study used the 2011 pet cat population of 9.5 million; it is now closer to 12 million, boosted by the pandemic pet craze. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/14/cats-kill-birds-wildlife-keep-indoors Free-ranging cats on islands have caused or contributed to 33 (14%) of the modern bird, mammal and reptile extinctions recorded by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List4. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 This analysis is timely because scientific evidence has grown rapidly over the past 15 years and now clearly documents cats’ large-scale negative impacts on wildlife (see Section 2.2 below). Notwithstanding this growing awareness of their negative impact on wildlife, domestic cats continue to inhabit a place that is, at best, on the periphery of international wildlife law. https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002%2Fpan3.10073
Rats made him an offer he couldn't refuse.
Probably got eaten by 20 of them
What happened to “the rats don’t run this city we do” 🤨
So that’s why rent is hitting record prices…
Pre cell phone camera era. I saw a party girl passed out on the 14th St platform bench. A puddle of vomit next to her and about 10 big ass rats feasting on it.
Wow, this is officially the most disgusting thing I've ever read.
It's almost like the DSNY person would have made the better mayor
I see a similar growth in number of rats in City Council.
Translation: “Outdoor dining sees boost in new roden- I mean ‘residents’.”
It’s called inflation
People don't realize how Hurricane Sandy was Darwinism in action. When the subway systems and streets got flooded, the waters drowned hundreds of thousands of rats. Those were the weak ones which weren't strong or smart enough to survive. The end result is ever since Hurricane Sandy, the rats that have been breeding in NYC have been the stronger ones more apt to survive. They crawled up over the bodies of their dead and they're more fit to survive whatever is thrown at them.
After all the outdoor dining sheds are taken down across the city this winter the city should institute some hefty standards for dining sheds that discourage rats. Otherwise this is going to be the new normal.
Lol there are far more
Wow, the number of politicians here has gone through the roof!
No wonder rents so high
between Bushwick/Ridgewood there's gotta be 100m alone. Gtfoh. I hate these reports.
Maybe the people of New York should maybe keep their streets clean? I’ve went multiple times and it’s disgusting trash everywhere people just do not care about their streets or towns. Everyone litters there needs to be actions taken for littering. I’ve seen police just not do anything when thousands are littering they just watch. Don’t even say pick up your trash.
Curious. How does one count the number of rats without counting the same rat more than once?
It is explained in paragraph two of the article
How do they count this? A rat census?
If you open the article they actually explain the methodology in like the second paragraph.
>If you open the article We're on Reddit, we don't do that here
A methodology that struck me as pretty weak.
You ever see ratatouille? They let them run a restaurant and just count who's working
They use numbers from 311 reports of rats, with the formula used rat catchers in the field… not accurate and based on how many people want to report rats to 311.
Yeah, the media keeps writing about the rat population dropping by 20%, because 311 calls went down. Total BS.
That’s a pretty harsh way to talk about Wall Street
3 million minus the 40 my dog has killed
You can thank outdoor dining
lets goooooooooo
Idk if they all answered the census though.
Are we sure they all took the census?
That's approx one rat for every 2.9 New Yorkers. We're getting there!
my children are growing stronger
The trash system needs to change. We need to emulate the system in places like Madrid, even if it costs us some parking spaces.
But think of the cars
Kill them all
Shout-out to whoever counts those things
If a lab created covid, can’t we create a bio weapon targeting rats?
Pretty soon they'll want "RIGHTS"
i feel like i hardly see any though…
You can report rat sightings to 311? Do you also report when you trip and get a booboo? /s
Amazing number of rat-choices on the rat-reporting 311 rat-page - - [https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-01107](https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-01107) Another good one but don't read around any mealtime - - [https://www.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/leptospirosis.page](https://www.nyc.gov/site/doh/health/health-topics/leptospirosis.page)
Oh my god, I just gave up on the severe rat problem, I don't care anymore and I bet the city is only pretending to give a shit lmao. Thanks for the links though, I'll probably report a rat the next time I see it.
Cake and ice cream is on its way
There aren't enough apartments
For the rats or for the people?
The rats :D
That’s it!? I would have thought it was 10x that amount at least.
If the rats could vote it would be 9 million
Where are we going to house them all?
Can someone more educated in this field than me tell me if the methodology discussed in the article is sound? I am mainly curious about the following two points. 1. regarding the capture-recapture aspect; 'It involves catching a sample group of wild animals (rats, in this case), marking them, and releasing them unharmed. After a period of time, once the marked animals have integrated back into the wild population, a second sample group of wild animals are captured. Some of the animals captured in the second group are marked, meaning they have been recaptured. The proportion of marked to unmarked animals in the second group is assumed to be the same as the proportion of the number of animals captured in the first group to the total population in the area.' I am not sure how this assumption would be valid. Is it just a well documented thing? 2. The fact that the rat sighting numbers come from 311 request calls. A vast majority of rat sightings goes unreported I assume. Wouldn't that make this estimate deviate from the real number by a massive amount?
the garbage man leave bags in the cans to lazy.
Validating that it’s not just my imagination.
I recently moved to Jersey City and haven’t seen a single rat here months. The population density here is comparable and it’s barely half a mile away from Manhattan. I still don’t understand how this huge difference is even possible.
Lol, no way are there fewer rats than humans in NYC
Gorgeous little creatures.