New research suggests that brown rats crawled off ships earlier than previously thought and quickly out-competed rival black rats to take over North American cities.
Save money with these awesome Insider DealsFILE - Rats swarm around a bag of garbage near a dumpster in New York on July 7, 2000.
From this research, “we know a more exact time of when they arrived and then what they were doing once they got here,” said Frye, who was not involved with the study. “Having that picture of the rat population helps us better understand what they’re doing and maybe how we can manage them.” The data suggests that shipping networks across the Atlantic Ocean “essentially functioned as rat superhighways,” with brown rats gaining their earliest footholds in coastal shipping centers, said Ryan Kennedy, a study author at Indiana University who researches animal remains at archaeological sites.
The biggest issue? Rats can carry diseases. Brown rats are known to spread a bacterial disease called leptospirosis, which is caused by bacteria in the urine of infected animals. They can also help spread murine typhus and food-borne germs like salmonella.
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