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Comment by forgotmypw | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for saying this. From a non-human-centric perspective, it is essentially mass murder of intelligent, sentient species that has been used as a scapegoat for various "sanitation" problems that were actually the result of human overpopulation.

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The article addresses their status as animals just fine.

> Rats were declared a pest in 1950, making rat control mandatory.

Rats are a pest because they can survive all over the globe, and in transit, as an invasive species, and multiply quickly. Societies all around the world have independently discovered the need for pest control because of how much damage (including spreading disease) they cause and how difficult population control is, and a term for "pest" exists in multiple languages. There are places that treat them far less humanely, and places where non-pest animals are much less protected.

Yeah, but my perspective is unapologetically human-centric. We've got plenty of our own problems to fix. Being nice to rats is so far down my list of concerns that I'd consider it generous to spend even a modicum of effort on it.

The problem with that perspective is that it ignores the fact that we are living in a fragile and interdependent ecosystem, and it is impossible to harm the rats without harming ourselves in the process.

rats are not a native species in most places; they are introduced and actually harm native species and ecosystems.

the article mentions this

I'm not convinced. However, I am convinced that it's impossible to coddle the rats without harming ourselves in the process.

Don't they carry disease (or carry parasites that carry disease) and cause lots of damage (e.g. chewing on wires and stuff)?

Personally, I always thought they were kind of cute but it still seems like they are something that would need to be managed.

They do in fact carry disease.

I agree that rats are pretty cute; they make good pets (if you can come to terms with their 2-3 year lifespan). But they absolutely need to be managed, just like any other wildlife population that we are in close contact with.

I was curious if they were illegal to have as pets in Alberta. It appears they are: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/first-person/rats/artic...

They were primarily responsible for the spread of the Black Death/Great Plague, one of the worst pandemics in human history, so yes. And I'd like to point out that the plague still exists[1]. Now imagine what could happen if we just gave rats free rein... I'm all for animal rights and sympathy, but harmful pests need to be suppressed or eradicated in the areas where they can do harm, whether that's rats, mosquitoes, or locusts.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/plague/maps/index.html

Actually, rats' involvement in the spread of the Black Plague is under question.

https://www.history.com/news/rats-didnt-spread-the-black-dea...

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/01/rats-plague-blac...

https://www.sciencealert.com/black-death-plague-spread-human...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2...

> They were primarily responsible for the spread of the Black Death/Great Plague

While rats can and do spread plague, you might be interested in the widely-covered paper that came out last year concluding that rats probably did not cause the Black Death, and that it was instead spread by fleas and lice on travelling humans:

Scientific: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/01/09/1715640115

To be fair, they carry diseases but had helped to cure lots of other human diseases. Their impact on human health is huge and probably the final result is positive. They also eliminate some rotten things stuck in pipelines, cockroaches and garbage. If we point its dark side we should notice also the other part.

Rats also chase mice actively, that is an unexpected problem in management disclosed by ecologists. You can't manage just rats. Is the wrong way to do it.

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