NYC mice and rats are evolving against human strategy, new study finds
They’re winning the rat race.The Big Apple’s rodents are evolving to become smarter and stronger than their biggest predators — humans.House mice are genetically mutating to build immunity against household pesticides, while rats are simply figuring out how to escape deadly traps, according to a study published this month.
“They have adapted to human strategy, which means we have to understand more and we have to become much smarter than them,” Jin-Jia Yu, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Entomology at the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, told The Post.Yu and his Rutgers partner, Changlu Wang, sampled DNA of 300 house mice and Norway rats from dense urban areas in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington DC and New York — the latter of which all came from the Big Apple.They soon discovered the rodents were evolving, though the species were advancing in different ways than one another.A whopping 70% of pesky house mice had a genetic mutation that rendered anticoagulant poisons — the most common form of rodenticide — useless.“When the mice eat the poison, they can still function normally, basically.That’s why they are more tolerant,” explained Wang, an extension specialist in the Department of Entomology.Mice have built up immunity after decades of letting their curiosity get the best of them, leading them to consume unfamiliar food sources, including poison baits.Much more suspicious by nature, rats are not evolving to have the same mutation at the same rate — but the sneaky squeakers seem to be developing in their brains.A study of rats, particularly in the Bronx, found that the rodents have become expert escape artists.“We have a lot of video clips showing that the rats can avoid the physical traps, like snap traps and sticky traps, which are used very frequently by pest control professionals.
They can spend one week or 300 approaches before they even touch the traps,” Yu said.The findings indicate that mi...