DC’s war on rats goes digital | Hacker News Reader

DC’s war on rats goes digital

wamu.org

31 pointsfern1253 comments

I know these are used with great success in Norway: https://youtu.be/rfT9orf5Qrg

Sensors detect the rat and kills it immediately. Then it’s flushed out with other sewage. It also keeps count of how many rats are killed, which gives the city some numbers to use in their estimations.

Holy shit, it's the spike trap from every video game ever. :S

We use the same kind of traps in some cities in Denmark, and I think it was invented by a Dane as well. They are incredibly effective at preventing the rats in the edges of the network, but sadly they do nothing for the main sewer lines. We need AI and lasers for that, but that is far in the future.

The main benefit is that you know how many rats it have killed. And once there isn't more rats you can move it to a new place. You can get it for sewer lines from 110mm to 250mm I believe, so fine for the sewage lines that go into your property. In fact it's a cheap investment to guarantee that rats cannot enter your property through the sewers.

So, is calling 311 the only way to report on such an important yet simple (not really requiring verbal explanation nor personal data about the witness) subject? I would never call a telephone unless the rats or whatever were actually threatening a life and I were sure I can't manage on my own. C'mon, it's 2018, people are using apps (anonymously if possible) and texting each other, if somebody actually calls me I expect them to be either dying or trying to sell me something I don't need! Why not just make an app that lets you take a picture and send it with a timestamp and the location data (and nothing else) embedded straight to the server?

No need to even make an app, just make www.DCratsighting.com and have an upload button to upload the image with full EXIF.

You can create 311 requests online at 311.dc.gov or use a couple different apps.

They really try pretty hard to make it easy already. "311" is available as a web app, native mobile app, and automated SMS service. I bet you could tweet photos to @dohdc as well.

The city is hiring exterminators. They are using technology to make the people dispatching those exterminators more efficient or effective.

If the city were serious about getting rid of rats they'd provide incentives for or otherwise subsidize behavior that helps solve the problem (which is very different from penalizing behavior that doesn't, I know those two often get confused around here). I'm not seeing any evidence of such based on this article which leads me to believe this is probably not an effective use of available resources. Efficient exterminators and other silver bullets don't usually do a good job solving big problems in the long term.

Beware the Cobra Effect! Incentives are hard, hard things to get right.

"The term cobra effect originated in an anecdote set at the time of British rule of colonial India. The British government was concerned about the number of venomous cobra snakes in Delhi. The government therefore offered bounty for every dead cobra. Initially this was a successful strategy as large numbers of snakes were killed for the reward. Eventually, however, enterprising people began to breed cobras for the income. When the government became aware of this, the reward program was scrapped, causing the cobra breeders to set the now-worthless snakes free. As a result, the wild cobra population further increased. The apparent solution for the problem made the situation even worse."

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect

This very thing happened with rats in French-occupied Hanoi in 1902: all you had to do to claim a bounty was turn in a rat’s tail. Rats without tails can still have babies and soon people were breeding rats for profit instead of killing them.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hanoi-rat-massacre-190...

> got a new galvanized steel can, even though the trash crew won’t empty it

I don't understand this bit. Why wouldn't they empty it? It seems like metal bins would be a fine solution to rats chewing through them.

The sanitation workers would actually have to lift and dump the can, which they are not allowed to do. The plastic bins can be dumped into the truck by a mechanism. This was adopted by cities to reduce workers compensation claims from injuries caused by lifting.

Can they not make metal bins that work with the same mechanism?

You get what the city gives you. Metal would probably be more expensive in any case.

I think a simpler solution is that people and restaurants throw their trash in closed trash bins. Rats eat food which are thrown on the ground or otherwise easily accessible.

I believe that some people in big cities has lost a sense of community. Thus some throw food on the ground that the rats eat.

To get rid of rats cities need to be cleaner.

It says in the article is that most people’s trash cans have been chewed through by the rats

elsewhere on the planet , some rats being trained to be productive members of human society :)

https://scitechafrica.com/2016/04/16/super-rats-are-eliminat...

Cant believe those rats chew throw the trash bins. And don’t ever want to see that happen to mine

Trash cans these days tend to be rubber or plastic, so it’s no challenge to a rat. Rats can chew through pretty much anything short of concrete and solid metal, with teeth which grow continuously. They need to chew, to file their teeth, so chewing is a major exploratory activity for the little guys.

Even mice - I discovered in a car that belonged to a family member who was diabetic, and hadn't driven for months, that mice had gotten into the glove box, where there were a bunch of insulin injection tips, plastic with needles, they had munched them to little bits, absolutely went to town on them. I have no idea why they would do that, but I guess rodents chew compulsively.

They do. Ive lived with some pet rats and you need to provide toys for them to chew and they get demolished fairly quickly. Their teeth do not stop growing and need to be constantly work down. That's true for all rodents as far as I am aware

Why not stop using poison and just let some cats lose. My city ally has a healthy cat population most of which have been TNR'ed. The only rat I've ever seen was the severed heard of one that some kittens were devouring on the pavement.

> Why not stop using poison and just let some cats lose

Fast forward 5 years, you got yourself a healthy plague of feral cats - plus complaints from regular cat owners that the ferals pick fights with their cats. In addition introducing mass numbers of cats causes a rapid uptick in bird deaths (cats can eat islands virtually birdfree) and they're a considerable risk for accidents with vehicles or small kids.

You're right about the toll on the birds and other small animals, but not about the exploding population.

Key West has an informal program of spay/neuter of feral cats. They also inoculate them and notch their ears. It stabilizes the population.

The cat population can be simply and easily controlled with the introduction of some eagles...

Come to Jerusalem if you want to see the effects of that. There are lots of stray cats that leave bigger messes than rats and fight bigger animals (pets) than rats. If you want to think of releasing dogs to to catch the cat, then look at Moscow. If you then want to release a goat, then you should read "The Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly"

This is a disastrous idea, historically proven time and time again to be a disastrous idea.

There are rats in my neighborhood of DC, but I haven't seen cans chewed into. The so-called "Supercans" were supposed to have been harder for rats to get into.

It seems to me that "continually kill large numbers of X" is an inherently broken solution to "I don't want X to live here".

If you have large numbers of X, it's because you're creating a very favorable habitat for it. If you don't address that issue and just keep killing them, you'll have both large numbers of X and large numbers of X corpses.

There are also arguably ethical issues with killing huge numbers of intelligent, social animals simply because we don't like their presence.

A traditional and effective measure against urban rat populations is stray cats. But for whatever reason people in the west won't allow that anymore.

One of the related stories on the site talks about using feral cats: https://wamu.org/story/17/07/07/feral-cats-solve-d-c-s-rat-p...

There is a program to place feral cats with residents who request them and it has a waiting list. Its effectiveness is debated, and bird advocates don't like it.

I've seen rats in DC that would eat a cat for breakfast. Those suckers are huge!

So you need coyotes instead?

They can likely deal with any size rat.

Or rat terriers, controlling rats since 1545 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Terrier

Cats can decimate local bird populations as well

Because they are indiscriminate. They are not programmed to attack just rats, they will decimate all small animal populations and fight with pets. We could let that happen but that comes back around to having an increasingly human unfriendly environment to deal with the rats

The problem is that there are quite a few X who adapt rapidly to new environments and also like the same kinds of environments as humans, and so creating human-friendly X-unfriendly environments becomes increasingly challenging as X adapts more and more to only require what humans require from an environment.

If rats are chewing through plastic garbage bins, make the bins toxic.

It's one or two rats chewing trough there, once the hole is in, the other rats will just use it without having to chew any of the plastic.

But now you have literally toxic garbage bins, plastic waste is already hard enough to get rid off, making it toxic certainly wouldn't make that any easier.

You don't even have to go that far, just lace them with rat birth control drugs like NYC does with the subways.

That's actually not a bad idea. Only problem is that one rat's going to get birth control drugs and get his fill of trash. All of the other rats don't need to chew through the can after the first one's made the hole for them.

Make a bin filled with birth control then.

Require everyone to fill their trashcans with rat birth control pills?

Those toxins would then filter up and down the food chain. Surely there are many better ways to combat rats than introducing poisons into the environment.

Not sure more toxins is the way to go. How about old school galvanised iron bins?

Those rust very quickly.

Why do we always declare war on things we know we can’t possibly beat? Drugs... rats... terror... might as well declare war on entropy and human nature. Rats will be here long after we’re gone, and until then we’ll never be far from them; such is life.

This is great.

George Orwell has something to say about this:

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/386688-the-war-therefore-if...

I hate the war metaphor too. You'll never get rid of rats entirely. Controlling rat populations in cities is really about food sources. The number of rats is limited by the amount of continuous non seasonal food sources available. In this case it seems like the city needs better garbage cans.

Proper maintenance to keep rats out of housing helps with the nuisance aspect. Because rats are destructive.

One wonders, if you got rid of rats, what would take their place? No idea, might be worse. I think the current brown rats aren't actually a disease vector[1]. I've read speculation that the decline of the plague was due to brown rats displacing black rats in cities. Maybe brown rats are doing us a favor.

[1] Rat lung worm in Hawaii though is a zoonotic nuisance. Also a friend got rat lice once.

> One wonders, if you got rid of rats, what would take their place? No idea, might be worse.

Many cities don't have a significant rat problem and they don't seem to have anything worse as a consequence.

Friend of mine had a large hedge that ran the length of his property in a nice suburban neighborhood. Thing was a rat highway. Meaning if you think there aren't any rats in your neighborhood, you're mistaken. Probably as many rats as people. The urban forest provides.

It's a bit disturbing that it's the go to metaphor for promoting policies.

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