Rats Are Disappearing From New York City — Scientists Shocked by What’s Already Hunting Them

The Rat Invasion [00:05]

• New York City, a highly developed metropolis, has been battling an estimated 3 million rats for a century.
• These rodents gnaw through wiring, weaken foundations, and transmit diseases, leading to hospitalizations.

• "Around 3 million rats have burrowed beneath the concrete of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx."

Costly Countermeasures [00:33]

• The city invested $32 million in various anti-rat strategies, including smart traps, chemical birth control in sewers, and carbon monoxide in tunnels.
• A highly paid director of rat control was hired, yet the rat population remained over 3 million.

• "And after all of it, there were still more than 3 million rats."

An Unexplained Decline [00:55]

• In some parts of Manhattan, rat numbers began to decrease naturally, without new interventions.
• This unexplained drop in rodent population occurred without additional traps or poison.

• "And nobody could explain it."

The Unlikely Solution [01:11]

• The solution to the $32 million problem was neither a machine nor a chemical, but a natural predator.
• This predator, a red-tailed hawk named Pale Male, had returned from the brink of extinction.

• "It was hunting from the top of the skyscrapers, and it had come back from the edge of extinction 50 years ago."

Pale Male, the Celebrity Hawk [01:37]

• Pale Male lived for 30 years on a Fifth Avenue building ledge, becoming a famous figure among bird watchers and tourists.
• He was photographed with a rat, highlighting his role as a predator.

• "Lifting off from his nest with a freshly killed rat hanging from his beak."

The Unseen Predator Army [09:26]

• A population of aerial predators, including red-tailed hawks, peregrine falcons, and great horned owls, has re-established itself across New York City's five boroughs.
• These birds hunt in shifts: hawks during the day, falcons in open air, and owls at night, providing nearly round-the-clock coverage.

• "Together, they have turned the sky over the city into something the rats have no answer for."

The "Landscape of Fear" [18:35]

• Predators control prey not just by eating them, but by instilling fear, a concept known as the "landscape of fear."
• Experiments show that the mere presence of predators, even without direct attacks, can significantly reduce prey reproduction and survival rates.

• "Fear on its own, with zero killing, cut their numbers by nearly half."

Accidental Re-Wilding [21:25]

• The near extinction of birds of prey due to DDT in the mid-20th century allowed rat populations to flourish unchecked.
• Conservation efforts, including the ban of DDT and breeding programs for falcons, led to the recovery of these predators.

• "But by saving the predators, they accidentally rebuilt the natural control system that sits directly on top of the rat."

Cost-Effective Control [24:21]

• The natural predator system is significantly more cost-efficient than the city's technological interventions.
• A family of owls can take hundreds of rats annually at no cost, while city-funded pest control is expensive and less effective.

• "The predators are not just effective, they are the most cost-efficient exterminators the city has ever had."

The Real Lesson [25:03]

• New York's century-long rat war was lost by focusing on killing harder, while the solution came from the return of fear induced by predators.
• The successful strategy is not a smarter poison, but the re-establishment of a predator population that was nearly wiped out.

• "The thing that finally started to work was not a smarter poison. It was the return of fear delivered by a predator we very nearly wiped out by accident."