I don’t know about rats much but had them as pets in elementary school (they are quite affectionate) and they shouldn’t suffer like this.
This may not be in scope of your article, but here’s some questions that might be valuable to answer:
1. What is the total population of urban rats at stake in your area of South Africa? E.g. X number of animals and how many die poorly?
2. In your area, what is the total size of vertebrate urban wildlife and what is the relative number of rats (compared to pigeons, mice, etc.)?
3. Why choose rats? Any particular reason?
4. Any guesses on the cost effectiveness of interventions? (maybe especially compared to established EA animal welfare interventions?) Cost effectiveness is difficult and important, so even a sketch would be useful, e.g. saying something like “Private conversations with experts suggested there is a sense that policy campaigns can be low cost” is useful.
5. Is there any “flow-through”/learning/”capacity building” value from executing the mentioned interventions on other animal welfare projects, especially worldwide, outside of South Africa?
Maybe you know the answer to some of the above, or maybe you have a link to someone who does. Or if you don’t think anyone has an answer right now, it’s good to know this too!
I think answers to questions 4 and 5 would be very interesting and helpful to a new org or someone in this space.
Great article, this seems like a really important area!
Thanks for taking the time to read our article. You raise some good questions.
Concrete data on urban rat populations is very scarce, partly due to the difficulty and labour intensiveness of gathering data. Even when these studies are conducted, the numbers tend to be broad estimates based on nuisance reports or capture-recapture methods. For example, in 2014 the estimated rat population of New York City was around 2 million . Considering that Cape Town has a smaller population and lower population density than NYC, it is plausible that it has a smaller rat population. However, based on the frequent news coverage of rat infestations, especially in informal settlements, and the number of bait stations maintained by the city (over 10, 000 in 2020) it is likely that the population is significant.
This is a great question, but again one that is difficult to answer, for the reasons outlined above, when it comes to populous small vertebrates (especially if they are considered pests or alien species and therefore not an ecological priority). The population s of more charismatic urban wildlife species are better studied. For e.g. there are an estimated caracals 45,000 to 150,000 across the entire country, and about 500 baboons in the Cape.
Rats are numerous, their welfare is neglected, and the negative impact on their welfare due to the prevailing forms of population management are significant.
I don’t know the full answer to this one, but here is what I’ve come up with so far. I think many of the alternatives proposed here don’t compare very favourably from a cost-efficacy perspective to ARs. Alpha-chloralose, for example, is more expensive than ARs (Mason and Littin), and rodent-proofing can also be costly and time consuming. However, there is some evidence that snap traps can be favourably cost-effective compared to ARs (Mason and Littin). The Khayelitsha program (using live trapping) was also comparably low-cost to ARs . With regard to the development of more humane lethal methods, I am guessing that the research and development costs would be quiet significant.
Our research so far suggests that some other cities in South Africa and in Africa use a similar rat management strategy to Cape Town, and in some instances have similar environmental and socio-economic drivers of their rat populations. In these instances the interventions and considerations explored in this research may be a valuable starting point.
Interesting!
Potentially ignorant question, from someone who loves rats and humans:
Do urban rats spread disease and/or bite people?
I was surprised that those potential risks didn’t figure into the survey or people’s responses and attitudes. What are the risks to the humans of letting rats live among them?
If there are real health risks to people from having a large rat population around, I would expect a culture would be wise to use stories of witchcraft to spread the wisdom that rats are “bad news” to human health.
It’s sad when one mammal’s welfare (humans) is at odds with another mammal’s welfare (rats) but I feel more trust in a species-specific welfare agenda when I have info about the trade offs to other species in their ecosystem.
I think your comment was intended for the original posters, Gabriele James or Andrew Fisher, either of whom know way more than me, since my knowledge of this is from reading this post.
You might want to directly reply to their post so they can see your thoughts.
Uh, some quick thoughts anyways:
It’s sad when one mammal’s welfare (humans) is at odds with another mammal’s welfare (rats) but I feel more trust in a species-specific welfare agenda when I have info about the trade offs to other species in their ecosystem.
I think your premise is that there has to be a trade off between rats or humans, but I don’t think this is the premise of likely interventions or the view of the original posters.
Importantly, I think one intervention is the reasonable reduction of urban rat populations, e.g. removing garbage and food sources, so we don’t have a lot of rats who suffer.
(Note that there’s a little micro-history in wild animal welfare where some people got the sense that the outcome of the whole idea was removing animal populations in general, but this is basically too simplistic. As far as I can tell, wild animal welfare people like animals and nature, you know, like normal people do).
Do urban rats spread disease and/or bite people? I was surprised that those potential risks didn’t figure into the survey or people’s responses and attitudes. What are the risks to the humans of letting rats live among them? If there are real health risks to people from having a large rat population around, I would expect a culture would be wise to use stories of witchcraft to spread the wisdom that rats are “bad news” to human health.
Well, South Africa has a really vibrant culture and I can’t imagine how to characterize it, but well, my guess is that there is strong sentiment against rats among some.
As the OP said, there was “pro-suffering”, people wanted to see rats suffer (despite the fact rats have no control and literally just want to eat to survive).
Fantastic post and research!
I don’t know about rats much but had them as pets in elementary school (they are quite affectionate) and they shouldn’t suffer like this.
This may not be in scope of your article, but here’s some questions that might be valuable to answer:
1. What is the total population of urban rats at stake in your area of South Africa? E.g. X number of animals and how many die poorly?
2. In your area, what is the total size of vertebrate urban wildlife and what is the relative number of rats (compared to pigeons, mice, etc.)?
3. Why choose rats? Any particular reason?
4. Any guesses on the cost effectiveness of interventions? (maybe especially compared to established EA animal welfare interventions?) Cost effectiveness is difficult and important, so even a sketch would be useful, e.g. saying something like “Private conversations with experts suggested there is a sense that policy campaigns can be low cost” is useful.
5. Is there any “flow-through”/learning/”capacity building” value from executing the mentioned interventions on other animal welfare projects, especially worldwide, outside of South Africa?
Maybe you know the answer to some of the above, or maybe you have a link to someone who does. Or if you don’t think anyone has an answer right now, it’s good to know this too!
I think answers to questions 4 and 5 would be very interesting and helpful to a new org or someone in this space.
Great article, this seems like a really important area!
Hi Charles,
Thanks for taking the time to read our article. You raise some good questions.
Concrete data on urban rat populations is very scarce, partly due to the difficulty and labour intensiveness of gathering data. Even when these studies are conducted, the numbers tend to be broad estimates based on nuisance reports or capture-recapture methods. For example, in 2014 the estimated rat population of New York City was around 2 million . Considering that Cape Town has a smaller population and lower population density than NYC, it is plausible that it has a smaller rat population. However, based on the frequent news coverage of rat infestations, especially in informal settlements, and the number of bait stations maintained by the city (over 10, 000 in 2020) it is likely that the population is significant.
This is a great question, but again one that is difficult to answer, for the reasons outlined above, when it comes to populous small vertebrates (especially if they are considered pests or alien species and therefore not an ecological priority). The population s of more charismatic urban wildlife species are better studied. For e.g. there are an estimated caracals 45,000 to 150,000 across the entire country, and about 500 baboons in the Cape.
Rats are numerous, their welfare is neglected, and the negative impact on their welfare due to the prevailing forms of population management are significant.
I don’t know the full answer to this one, but here is what I’ve come up with so far. I think many of the alternatives proposed here don’t compare very favourably from a cost-efficacy perspective to ARs. Alpha-chloralose, for example, is more expensive than ARs (Mason and Littin), and rodent-proofing can also be costly and time consuming. However, there is some evidence that snap traps can be favourably cost-effective compared to ARs (Mason and Littin). The Khayelitsha program (using live trapping) was also comparably low-cost to ARs . With regard to the development of more humane lethal methods, I am guessing that the research and development costs would be quiet significant.
Our research so far suggests that some other cities in South Africa and in Africa use a similar rat management strategy to Cape Town, and in some instances have similar environmental and socio-economic drivers of their rat populations. In these instances the interventions and considerations explored in this research may be a valuable starting point.
Interesting! Potentially ignorant question, from someone who loves rats and humans: Do urban rats spread disease and/or bite people? I was surprised that those potential risks didn’t figure into the survey or people’s responses and attitudes. What are the risks to the humans of letting rats live among them? If there are real health risks to people from having a large rat population around, I would expect a culture would be wise to use stories of witchcraft to spread the wisdom that rats are “bad news” to human health. It’s sad when one mammal’s welfare (humans) is at odds with another mammal’s welfare (rats) but I feel more trust in a species-specific welfare agenda when I have info about the trade offs to other species in their ecosystem.
I think your comment was intended for the original posters, Gabriele James or Andrew Fisher, either of whom know way more than me, since my knowledge of this is from reading this post.
You might want to directly reply to their post so they can see your thoughts.
Uh, some quick thoughts anyways:
I think your premise is that there has to be a trade off between rats or humans, but I don’t think this is the premise of likely interventions or the view of the original posters.
Importantly, I think one intervention is the reasonable reduction of urban rat populations, e.g. removing garbage and food sources, so we don’t have a lot of rats who suffer.
(Note that there’s a little micro-history in wild animal welfare where some people got the sense that the outcome of the whole idea was removing animal populations in general, but this is basically too simplistic. As far as I can tell, wild animal welfare people like animals and nature, you know, like normal people do).
Well, South Africa has a really vibrant culture and I can’t imagine how to characterize it, but well, my guess is that there is strong sentiment against rats among some.
As the OP said, there was “pro-suffering”, people wanted to see rats suffer (despite the fact rats have no control and literally just want to eat to survive).