"The findings shed light on how rats have adapted to city lifeand how chatty they are. There's this kind of secret language that rats are communicating in with each other that we don't hear, says Emily Mackevicius, a neuroscientist and a co-author of the study. They're very social, adds Ralph Peterson, another study co-author. They're rugged, and they're New Yorkers themselves: persistent and resilient and able to thrive in a very extreme environment."
"At three Manhattan locationsa park, a subway platform and a sidewalkthe team used a specialized wireless recorder to eavesdrop on the rats' ultrasonic conversations, which humans can't hear. They placed thermal cameras on tripods or held them by hand to record the warm bodies moving like glowing, otherworldly specters along the cooler ground. Dmitry Batenkov, a team member who works with machine learning and computational modeling,"
A field team observed brown rats across three Manhattan sites—a park, a subway platform, and a sidewalk—using specialized wireless recorders to capture ultrasonic vocalizations and thermal cameras to track body heat and movement. Machine learning and computational modeling converted two-dimensional thermal videos into three-dimensional reconstructions to avoid size and movement distortion from 2D footage. Observations indicate highly social behavior and extensive ultrasonic communication among rats. Brown rats (Rattus norvegicus) dominate New York City populations, estimated at about three million. The rats exhibit persistence, resilience, and adaptability that enable them to thrive in extreme urban environments.
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
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