Should Humans Eat Rats?
Subway rats are adding a new dimension to the definition of 'foody'. These nuisance rodents have defied previous poisons and traps set by transit officials. According to an article headlined, "MTA Sets New Tactic In Rat Wart", rats are 'foodies' who are also locavores'. The current extermination tactic is to offer bait laced with birth control medications. This approach has been successful elsewhere, but it has been difficult in New York.
Devising a tempting bait has revealed that city rats have sophsticated regional palates. Rats in Laos like coconut, which did not appeal to rats in Indonesia that prefer fish. What tempts rats in New York city?
Officials are trying food from their regional diets - trash that contains pizza crusts, cold French fries, and the remains of Chinese take-out. The experiment on the rats' favorite Manhattan trash recipe is being funded by that the National Institutes of Health. It allocated $1 million to finance rodent taste tests in NYC subway trash rooms. Preliminary findings: rats prefer pepperoni and chicken nuggets.
But this tactic may also be doomed because rats have an impressive record of outsmarting their exterminators. Past experiences have demonstrated that reducing adult populations may not reduce overall populations because the surviving rats, with less competition for food, reproduce very rapidly – four litters per year!
Locavores choose foods that can be consumed near where they are grown and processed. This means sacrificing strawberries in February if you live in the North, and apples in June if you live in the South. This approach enhances personal health and benefits the local economy and environment. The term ‘locavore’ was introduced in 2005 in the San Francisco area, when a number of “foodies” launched a website, Locavores.com. They were inspired by the book “Coming Home to Eat” by ecologist Gary Paul Nabham.
More recently, an “invasivore” movement has emerged as a subset of the locavore movement, which encourages the consumption of nonindigenous invasive species with the intent of controlling harmful populations. This suggests a solution to the rodent problem: HUMANS SHOULD EAT RATS!