The complicated human relationship with rats is well-documented on social media — where wild, urban rats in cities like New York occasionally go viral for their consumption habits, audacity, or predilection for consuming human food.
First, there was Pizza Rat — so-named because the wild rat was filmed in a now-viral video carrying an entire slice of pizza down the subway steps, while an onlooker says “live your best life.” (Pizza Rat was later revealed to be a hoax perpetrated by a performance artist named Zardulu.) In 2016, Pita Rats — two rats fighting, or perhaps sharing, a piece of pita bread — achieved similar virality. And in 2021, a video of a solo rat dragging a (thankfully, dead) crab through the subway tracks was viewed by hundreds of thousands.
But these city rats, though famous to online humans, are strangers in their own worlds, according to one rat expert. Indeed, the rats that you see by themselves, wandering around the built human environment, are technically the “losers” within their own social hierarchy. And though we find their food-dragging antics cool, their rodent peers certainly do not. Understanding why requires a little foray into the world of rats.
