Chapter 1: What would our cities look like without rats?
Here's Dani in her California living room. Perched on her shoulder is little Hayu, fully locked in. He's wearing a tiny yellow vest that reads, service animal. Dani suffers from brutal muscle spasms caused by nerve damage. Hayu's job is to feel the first subtle tremor before she does. He licks her neck and she immediately takes action before the spasm knocks her flat.
A minute can make a world of difference. He doesn't stand down until the danger passes. Then finally takes a well-deserved break and a delicious snack. Thank you for your service, Hayu. Danny's saviour, the rat. Rats. They hit our food supply and unleashed biological warfare. We hit back with nasty propaganda and almost every chemical we could get our hands on.
It's almost unthinkable to think we're related, but sometimes, just sometimes, we are in sync. Welcome to Life Without, where I take something away from the sum of life, a constant in our equation, just subtract it. With my powers, delete it. Done. No warning, no second chances, just the maths. Will the result be positive or negative? Or will it simply leave us divided?
For BBC Radio 4, this is Life Without, with me, Alan Davis.
Chapter 2: How do rats impact hygiene and public health?
And together, we'll find out whether a life without rats turns out to be the answer we all hope for.
The role of rodents in our world is so tremendous, there'd be quite a lot of chaos if the jury's out, really.
I needed someone to hold my hand through this scenario, so I've got Stephen Belmain, Professor of Ecology and the Centre Leader for Sustainable Agriculture at the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Greenwich. And Joe Shute, nature writer, journalist and the author of Stowaway, The Disreputable Exploits of the Rat.
They may be general mischief makers, but there's great potential we might coexist together more peacefully in the future.
I'm enjoying your optimistic tone. Just to be clear, I mean true rats, the animals in the genus Rattus. There are about 60 species, but you probably only know the greatest hits. There's the brown rat. Yes, your cute pet is just a gentrified version of this one. And then there's the smaller black rat, also known as the house rat, or the classic ship stowaway.
Rats have always been the ultimate fall guy. And I get it. They chew through our infrastructure, invade our homes and carry diseases. Though they were mostly framed for the Black Death, just saying. So here is my solution. From this moment on, I officially declare no rats. Now, one day into my rat-free world...
Stephen, they're not here anymore. Are we living the dream? I think in the short term, in a city like London or in any city around the world, there'd be a lot of relief. Their impact in some parts of the world is much more severe than what we routinely have to deal with here.
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Chapter 3: What role do rats play in scientific research?
Rats are living in people's houses in Africa in much higher numbers all the time. And their children have nightmares about rats because they're being bitten by rats while they're sleeping. And they can hear them running around in their house. So by getting rid of rats, we would make a lot of people's lives much better. What about diseases? Is it going to make a big difference?
The rat species can transmit lots of diseases. There are some farmers exposed to leptospirosis called Vile syndrome locally. But it's not a huge problem here in the UK. In other parts of the world, it is a massive problem, particularly in the tropics. and Norway rats are one of the main culprits for that.
We might see some diseases diminish, but remember, we're not getting rid of all rodents, and many of these diseases are harbored by other species of rodents. Plague can be found in black rats and brown rats, but in fact it probably came from gerbils, to be more precise.
So there's a lot of good evidence that rats became a transient reservoir, so they could transmit the disease in Europe, but actually they're not very good at being a reservoir, a plague. So getting rid of rats
It may make an impact for some diseases that are very specific to them, but diseases are very adaptable and these viruses and bacteria and helminths that they transmit can easily move between different species.
I've heard alarming things about bubonic plague returning and increasing.
We don't really know. I think that's one of the alarming things as a scientist and understanding a lot about rodents and diseases. Things like deforestation and climate change may be making things worse in some of the endemic parts of the world.
It sounds like removing all rats. It's only going to be a small part of that. Yeah. So perhaps we're being a bit unfair. Rats have a branding problem, I suppose. Garbage and germs. We don't want them in our homes. We don't want to see them. But, Joe, some people are feeling sad now that they've been gone for 24 hours, aren't they?
I have personal experience of waking up day one without rats because for a number of years I had a colony of four pet rats. And the great tragedy of having rats as pets is they have quite short lives between two and three years old.
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Chapter 4: How do rats affect agriculture and food production?
And gradually they died off. And on the day that the last one died, there was just this silence and a sense of bereavement that we had. It really opened my eyes to the inner lives of rats. They love playing hide and seek. And they don't just do it for treats, but they will go and scamper off and come back, and the reward is that they're tickled.
And they giggle, these kind of hypersonic frequencies which are inaudible to the human ear. When they finally died, we were left with a house without rats, if not a world, and it was a sad place.
It's the end of the first day, and I'm feeling slightly wistful and emotional for the people's pets, but delighted for communities in other countries who are perhaps looking to a rat-free future. It's one month in and I'm moving the party to the countryside. The rat menu there is limitless. Grains, vegetables, fruits. So Stephen, with them gone, have our farms become super productive?
I think if we were to look at livestock farms, farmers would be very pleased. The amount of food that is being eaten by rats in the UK is extraordinary. And farmers wouldn't have to put out any poison to try to kill those rats. The damage to their livestock itself in terms of disease transmission, but also just being bitten by rats.
It's on these intensive farms where the natural ecosystem that was there has been eradicated for massive food production. And you have a monoculture that's a sort of playground for rats where there's just one constant food source that they can go at. There's been interesting studies done. If you have wilder landscapes and wilder types of farming,
that naturally reduces rat populations because you have much more of their predators around.
Now, if you think my no rats plan is a fantasy, I want you to look at Alberta in Canada. Back in the 1950s, they launched an aggressive anti-rat campaign and to this day it is considered a rat-free place joke. Is Alberta the utopia I'm imagining it to be?
Well, if you want a world without rats, then yes, I went there and they have border patrols that patrol the border of eastern Alberta. And it's the only way that rats can get into the province. And they have hats that say Rat Patrol. And we went out in their Jeeps as well, which also branded on the side.
And they have blocks of warfarin or whichever anticoagulant bait they use and shotguns as well.
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Chapter 5: What happens to disease transmission if we eliminate rats?
One thing to bear in mind, Rattus evolved in Asia. So, if you went to Southeast Asia or parts of China and you said all ratists were gone, I hate to think about what would be happening because this would be almost all the rodents across the ecosystem.
We're not just talking about the absence of predators, but the impact on soil and seed dispersion and many of these ecological functions which are fundamental to making the world run. Elsewhere in the world, they have invaded quite successfully, and removing them would open up some habitat to other rodents that are there already naturally, which may become more of a problem by doing that too.
So getting rid of rats in London, suddenly we'd have many more problems with mice.
Now, earlier, I said it was unthinkable that we are related, but it's a scientific fact. We share ancestry with rats from millions of years ago, and our DNA is about a 90% match, and that's why we test everything on them. We owe them our health, and frankly, an apology for treating them like disposable tools. Stephen, in a world with no rats, does medical progress just stop?
Probably most tests nowadays, if we were to use a rodent of some kind, it would be with mice instead of rats. We've moved away from using rats in laboratories. Fortunately, a lot of this can now be done in cell culture, and we should see this as a good move away that we're not having to test everything on animals.
Rats are in the modern era, they're moving from being subjects of medical research to being partners in medical research. There's a particular project in Tanzania which is run by a charity called Apopo and they've trained up hero rats to scuttle across minefields and sniff out the dynamite and the TNT that's there.
And these are the giant African pouch rat which possesses an incredible sense of smell which all rats have.
They're actually used a lot in disease screening as well. So tuberculosis is a big problem throughout the developing world. These rats can smell the TB in a patient's putum sample. But they're tiny little heads and tiny little brains. But we must remember, these are not ratus either. So in our premise that ratus disappears, the hero rats would carry on.
But feasibly, the things they do with the pouch rat, that could be translated into ratus as well.
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Chapter 6: How does the absence of rats influence urban ecosystems?
So, Stephen, give me the good news. Are our buildings, our cars, our infrastructure finally safe?
Unfortunately, no. Oh, no. A lot of infrastructural damage is caused by many of these other rodent species that we haven't got rid of. And they're now thriving. And now thriving.
In cities, that lack of gnawing would have major implications for sewer networks. So rats serve a really vital purpose in sewers for nibbling the fats and horrible deposits that get left down there. And actually, we'll be losing this army of sewage disposal. Colleagues that keep the water running and prevent flooding on the surface
I have to admit, I am conflicted about this year without rats.
It hasn't been the paradise I expected. It would be undeniable sadness, as it would as the loss of any animal. I think this word vermin, which is constantly applied to rats, and it's a word that I feel dehumanises animals. deliberately animals and strips them away of the complexity of their inner lives and actually just makes them all about the mischief that they cause to humans.
It's only realised the taboo subject that is human as vermin, which is something that people are very resistant to hearing. It's time to take a long hard look at ourselves, perhaps. Yeah, we are pests just as much as rats. And perhaps this year without rats, maybe we'll lead to a bit more introspection from the human race.
If a rat runs a maze today, tonight its brain will run that same path again in its sleep, practising, learning and memorising every turn. And, as a relation, I think I should follow their lead. I'm going to sleep on everything we talked about today.
But my dream, it's that one day we can finally call a truce in this forever war and maybe, just maybe, learn to share the planet with our furry friends. Thank you to my brilliant guests, Steve Abelmane and Joe Shute. Next time on Life Without, what happens when the ground beneath our feet stops breathing? Join me for a life without worms.
Life Without Rats was produced by Rian Moussa with support from Michelle Martin. Rubina Babani is the executive producer, Emily Jarvis is production manager and sound designer mix is by Nick Handley and Tom Butler. The commissioning editor for Radio 4 is Rhian Roberts. This is an ITN production for BBC Radio 4.
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Chapter 7: What lessons can we learn from a year without rats?
Attention, animal lovers, haters and undecideds. A little birdie, a tit, told me that you're looking for a podcast just like Evil Genius, but without all those stupid humans. I'm Russell Cain, waddling onto your feed and squawking about my show, Evil Animals.
Every episode, I'm joined by two human guests, or as I like to call them, ex-monkeys, passing judgement on all the creepiest crawlies and the biggest elephants in the room. Are vampire bats terrifying giant mosquitoes? Are bottlenose dolphins sex-obsessed savages? And we're going there. Domestic cats, evil or genius? Pig out on evil animals in the Evil Genius podcast feed, first on BBC Sounds.