Culture
The Surprisingly Gentle Science Behind New York's Plan to Sterilize Its Rats
Hitting urban rodents in their reproductive systems may be the best thing to ever happen to them.
If rats had their own civil-rights lobby, it might be scurrying through Times Square right now, holding up teeny signs like, "Bureaucrats Out Of My Duplex Uterus."
That's because New York City is poised to slam down on the rodents with a revolutionary, biology-altering pilot experiment to shrink their natural populations. As you might've read in the Wall Street Journal, workers from an Arizona research company are conducting surveillance on rats in the subway system's garbage rooms. Soon enough, they plan to deploy bait stations loaded with chemicals that will neutralize the reproductive systems of female rats.