{"id":229602,"date":"2025-09-15T20:39:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T20:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/229602\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T20:39:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T20:39:10","slug":"nyc-rats-have-nightlife-and-a-language-all-their-own","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/229602\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC Rats Have Nightlife and a Language All Their Own"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Yorkers love to say this city never sleeps, but apparently neither do its rats. A new preprint field study<\/a> has revealed that the city\u2019s estimated three million rodents<\/a> aren\u2019t just freeloading on our garbage; they\u2019re running their own nocturnal society, complete with ultrasonic chatter that humans can\u2019t hear. Think of it as Rat Club, except the first rule is: Only rats are invited.<\/p>\n

RECOMMENDED: New York was named one of the best nightlife cities in America, because duh<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The research team, made up of neuroscientists Emily Mackevicius, Ralph Peterson, Ahmed El Hady and machine-learning specialist Dmitry Batenkov, set up camp at three classic New York City haunts: a park, a subway platform and a sidewalk. Using thermal cameras and specialized microphones, they recorded the rodents moving like glowing phantoms across the pavement while squeaking away at frequencies far above human hearing. The real kicker? When an ambulance screamed by, the rats screamed louder. As Mackevicius put it: \u201cThey\u2019re just kind of screaming to each other, but we just don\u2019t hear it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This chatter isn\u2019t just small squeaks about leftover pizza crusts. Peterson, who has studied rodent vocalizations, says the sheer volume suggests purpose. Why talk so much if it doesn\u2019t matter? The study even observed social dynamics: juvenile rats venturing out in clumsy packs of 20, while big, battle-hardened solo rats\u2014nicknamed \u201cMoby Dicks\u201d by exterminators\u2014stalked the streets with the calm confidence of seasoned bouncers.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not all fun and frolic. Rats here have been adapting for centuries, tweaking everything from skull shape to metabolism to thrive in a city built for humans. A Norway rat needs just an ounce of water and food daily and, lucky for them, we provide mountains of processed snacks. They reproduce at a breakneck speed, with females giving birth to litters every few weeks. Poison is barely a speed bump. As one exterminator told Joseph Mitchell in 1944, killing rats is like \u201ctaking aspirin for a cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s new is how scientists might use this data. By mapping where rats go and when they talk, urban planners could time trash pickups, design buildings with fewer cozy hideouts or even trial futuristic deterrents like sonic booby traps that \u201cspeak rat\u201d to shoo them away. Peterson frames it with Sun Tzu flair: \u201cTo defeat your enemy, you have to understand your enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soulless scavengers? Maybe not. More like the dolphins of the sewer system, singing their own secret soundtrack to New York\u2019s nightlife\u2014while the rest of us pretend we own the place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Yorkers love to say this city never sleeps, but apparently neither do its rats. A new preprint…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":229603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,10336,405,403,30302,5226,5225,5228,5227,1072,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-229602","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-categories-things-to-do","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-city","12":"tag-news-weird-wonderful","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkcity","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-things-to-do","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-united-states-of-america","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","22":"tag-us","23":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115210247711515703","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}