Urban pest populations can be effectively controlled not just through extermination methods, but by restoring natural ecological balance through the return of native predators. In New York City, the decline of rat complaints in certain neighborhoods coincided with the return of native birds of prey—peregrine falcons, red-tailed hawks, and great horned owls—which restored the natural fear hierarchy that had been absent for decades. These predators do not need to eliminate all rats; they simply make the urban environment less safe for rats by disrupting their movement patterns and reducing their surface activity, thereby decreasing human-rat encounters. This demonstrates that effective pest management requires understanding and restoring natural ecological relationships rather than relying solely on technological extermination methods.
The Fall of NYC’s Rat Empire: Scientists Reveal the Unexpected Creature Slaying Them.Added:
When the cat's away, the mice [music] will play. And that's definitely happening in New York City. With humans pretty much out of the picture, rats [music] have been emboldened in a way few have ever seen. New York is a city of bright lights, subway trains, [music] towering skyscrapers, and roughly 3 million rats.
They appear beneath subway [music] stations, behind overflowing trash bags piled along the sidewalks, >> [music] >> inside basements, within building walls, and even behind some of the busiest restaurants in the city.
For many New Yorkers, rats are no longer surprising. They have almost become an unpleasant part of urban life.
For years, the city has tried almost [music] everything to fight them. Traps were set. Poison was spread. Carbon monoxide was pumped into burrows. Rat hunting dog teams prowled the streets [music] at night. Trash bins were redesigned. Tens of millions of dollars were spent. But the rats kept coming back. Then, in a few Manhattan neighborhoods, the data began to reveal [music] something strange.
Rat complaints were going down.
There was no special extermination campaign there. No new poison. No secret trapping team.
And it was not because of cats.
Something was hunting them. But the answer was [music] not in the sewers, not inside the trash bins, and not in the traps placed close to the ground. It was above the skies of New York. World Enigma is all about uncovering fascinating mysteries from around the world. If you're enjoying this, hit like, subscribe, and turn on the notification bell so you never miss a new video. To understand why the drop in rat complaints in certain neighborhoods is so surprising, we first need to understand one thing.
New York didn't just end up with rats.
The city was almost built alongside them. The brown rat, also known as the Norway rat, has been in New York since the 1700s.
When European ships crossed the Atlantic, they didn't only carry goods, immigrants, and dreams of a new world.
Deep in their dark cargo holds, among sacks of grain and damp ropes, there were also smaller, quieter creatures.
Animals that could adapt better than almost any other species.
Rats followed the ships into port cities.
And when they arrived in New York, they found almost everything they needed to thrive. A crowded city, a complex underground sewer system, old buildings with hollow walls, basements, cracks, and pipes.
Restaurants serving millions of meals every day, and most importantly, garbage.
In New York, garbage isn't just something people throw away. For rats, it's [music] a feast laid out every single night. Trash bags piled along the sidewalks, bins that aren't properly sealed, leftover food from restaurants, pizza crusts dropped [music] beneath subway stations, a forgotten fast food container on a street corner. To humans, it's just a mess. But to rats, it's the reason they can survive, reproduce, and expand their territory. Rats don't need much to live. Just a small amount of food and water [music] each day is enough.
And in a city of more than 8 million people producing enormous amounts of organic waste every day, finding food is rarely a problem. That's why rats [music] don't live in just one place.
They are everywhere.
Under subway tracks, behind apartment walls, inside restaurant basements, along narrow alleyways, beneath construction sites, and in tiny spaces so small that most people never even notice them.
For New Yorkers, rats are both disgusting and strangely familiar.
An uncomfortable part of city life.
Some people see them dart across sidewalks at night.
Some hear them scratching inside the walls.
Some discover that the wiring in their cars [music] has been chewed through.
Others simply step off the curb to avoid a rat crossing the street as if it, too, were a legal resident of the city.
For years, urban legends claimed that New York had more rats than people.
That number may be exaggerated, but the problem is still serious.
Estimates suggest the rat population grew from around 2 million in 2014 to about 3 million by 2023, a roughly 50% increase in just over a decade.
3 million rats, a number large enough to turn rats from a sanitation issue into an urban crisis.
There are better ways of handling this rat crisis, and it's not poisoning our way out of it because it simply doesn't work.
Because rats don't just scare people, they cause real damage.
They chew through electrical wires, which can lead to short circuits and fires.
They dig burrows beneath building foundations, [music] weakening old structures.
They contaminate food in storage areas, restaurants, and grocery stores.
And more dangerously, they can carry diseases harmful to humans.
In a densely packed city like New York, where millions of people live, [music] eat, and move through the same crowded spaces every day, rats are no longer just a problem in one dirty alley or one old basement.
They are a sign that the entire urban system has accidentally created the perfect conditions for a pest species to thrive.
And the most uncomfortable truth is this, New York hasn't just stood by and watched them multiply. The city has fought back.
But the harder humans fought, the more they realized they weren't just dealing with a few small animals running through the dark.
They were facing a species that had lived alongside the city for hundreds of years.
A species that had learned how to read human routines, avoid danger, find food in waste, and turn every crack in New York into shelter.
In other words, rats don't just live in New York. They have learned how to operate with New York.
When a city has millions of rats, the problem is no longer just a few traps in the corner of a kitchen. It is a real war, and New York fought back with almost everything a modern city could mobilize. Money, technology, fines, professional extermination teams, toxic gas, hunting dogs, and large-scale waste management programs.
In 2017, the city launched an initiative worth around $32 million with the goal of sharply reducing rat populations in the most heavily affected areas.
The plan sounded reasonable. If rats survive on garbage, then garbage must become harder to reach. If rats nest in burrows, then those burrows must be attacked. If rats appear on the streets, then control efforts must [music] be strengthened.
Neighborhood by neighborhood, the city installed hundreds of solar-powered compacting trash bins.
These bins were designed to make it harder for rats to get inside, while also reducing the amount of trash spilling onto sidewalks.
Garbage collection schedules were expanded. Fines for illegal dumping were increased. The idea was clear. Cut off the food supply, reduce shelter, and make the city less attractive to rats.
But in reality, things were not as simple as they looked on paper.
A rat-resistant bin only works if it is properly [music] closed.
But if trash is piled around it, if the lid is left open, or if bags are thrown beside it instead of placed inside, the rats still win.
For them, one small opening, one torn trash bag, or one neglected street corner is enough to turn an entire modern system into an all-night buffet.
And when sanitation measures were not enough, the city had to turn to more direct methods.
In some areas, carbon monoxide was pumped into rat burrows. The goal was to kill them inside the tunnel systems they had dug beneath [music] sidewalks, parks, or building foundations.
More specifically, he's pumping carbon monoxide into the hundreds of sidewalk tree boxes along East 86th Street, killing most of the rats underground.
Professional extermination teams also deployed bait stations, rodenticides, snap traps, and a range of other methods. In some places, bait was placed first so rats would become used to feeding there.
Then, once they had lowered their guard, the traps were activated.
This was not a random hunt. It was a psychological game against an extremely cautious animal.
But, rats learn quickly. A few are killed, and the others [music] disappear into the walls. One burrow is treated, and they dig another route. One food source is cut off, and they move to the alley next door. A neighborhood may be cleaned up for a few weeks, but once the garbage returns, the rats return, too.
That is why some New Yorkers chose a rougher, more direct, and almost primitive method.
Hunting dogs.
At night, when most of the city has slowed down, [music] teams of terriers are brought into the streets. They are not going for a walk.
They are hunting. It's an alley in Lower Manhattan. Probably infested with rats.
Thousands of rats. All of these people that you see standing around behind me are dog nuts, and we do [music] it for our dogs. And if the truth be known, we do it because the dogs were bred to hunt vermin. One. Two.
Three. release the hounds.
>> [laughter] >> These dogs are trained to sniff [music] out rats in trash bags, bushes, under cars, around parks, [music] and in empty lots. Some dogs are used to flush rats out of hiding. Others wait outside, [music] ready to strike the moment a rat runs out. The scene can look chaotic.
People shouting, [music] dogs barking, trash bags shaking, a rat bursting out, and then, in a split second, it is over.
To the people taking part, it is a carefully organized activity. [music] To outsiders, it looks like a small battle taking place on the sidewalks of New York.
On some nights, these dog teams can catch dozens of rats.
For certain groups, that number is not even unusual.
But even the rat hunters understand their own limits. They can help reduce [music] rats in one neighborhood for a night. They can make a park cleaner for a while. They can support the community and do work that many people would never dare to do. But they cannot [music] control New York's entire rat population. Because killing 100 rats in a single night may sound like a lot.
But in a city that may have millions of rats, it is only a tiny scratch [music] on the surface of the problem.
And this is the paradox of the war.
Humans can win small battles. A trap can kill [music] one rat. A dog can catch one rat. An extermination team can treat one burrow. A good trash bin can protect one street corner. But to win the entire war, the city has to change the living conditions of rats on a massive scale.
If food remains, rats will keep reproducing.
If shelter remains, rats will keep coming back.
If trash still piles up on sidewalks every [music] night, every campaign is like trying to drain water while the faucet is still running.
By 2023, New York had even created a dedicated position for the rat problem, often called by the media the city's rat [music] czar or the commander of New York's war on rats. Today, to say that we have found our rat czar and she's focused >> [cheering] >> focused on improving the quality of life of New York. You'll be seeing a lot of me and a lot less rat. That showed the issue had gone far beyond the ordinary pest control teams. [music] Rats had become a political, public health, infrastructure, and urban image [music] problem.
But even with a new position, even with more funding, even with more bins, traps, toxic gas, and hunting dogs, the question remained, how can a city of more than 8 million people stop feeding the very animal it wants to eliminate?
When the war on the ground reached a deadlock, a familiar idea resurfaced in many people's [music] minds. Why not release more cats?
At first, it sounds logical.
In many people's minds, cats are the natural enemies of rats. If rats are appearing in basements, subway stations, and around trash bags, >> [music] >> then why not let cats do their job?
But the problem is that New York rats are not tiny house mice in a kitchen.
These are brown rats, larger, heavier, more aggressive, and much harder to deal with.
A cat may easily catch a small mouse, but with a full-grown brown rat, the hunt becomes far riskier.
In many cases, a cat will choose easier prey [music] instead of attacking an opponent that can turn around and bite back.
So, while cats may make rats more cautious in a few small areas, controlling millions of rats across an entire city is not a realistic solution.
More importantly, releasing more cats does not make garbage disappear.
It does not seal cracks in buildings.
It does not [music] repair old sewers, basements, or the hiding places that rats have used for generations.
If the food source remains, rats still have a reason to return.
And if too many feral cats are released [music] into the streets, the city may create another problem.
Feral cats don't only hunt rats. They can also hunt young birds, bird eggs, small reptiles, and many native animals that are easier to catch.
In other words, a solution that sounds natural does not necessarily create balance.
Sometimes, it only adds another hard-to-control variable to a system [music] that is already extremely complex.
So, if New York wants to reduce rats, the answer cannot simply be release [music] more cats into the streets.
But then, something else was happening in New York. No one released them from trucks. No one brought them in as part of a rat control [music] program.
No one wrote in the city's plan that this would become a new weapon against rodents.
They were not cats, not pets turned into [music] rat control tools, not a species introduced by humans to fix a mistake.
They were native predators that had once disappeared from the city skies for a long time, and now they were coming back.
But before these predators were noticed, almost no one was looking up at the sky.
For years, New York's war on rats had always been fought at ground level, sewers, trash bins, basements, [music] traps, and tiny holes at the base of buildings.
That made perfect sense because rats live right beneath people's feet.
But then, the city's 311 data began to show something strange.
In a cluster of neighborhoods in Upper Manhattan, once known as rat hotspots, complaints began to decline across several consecutive seasons.
There was no special extermination campaign there. No new kind of poison.
[music] No hunting dog team operating non-stop.
No evidence that the area had suddenly become much cleaner than anywhere else.
And it was not because [music] of cats.
From the ground, almost everything still looked the same.
The trash was still there.
The sewers were still there.
The routes rats had long used to move around had not disappeared.
But when complaint data was compared with maps of urban wildlife activity, a new connection began to appear.
The areas where rat complaints were falling overlapped with places where native birds of prey were being recorded more often.
Not cats.
Not dogs.
But falcons, owls, and hawks.
And when a researcher visited that neighborhood at dusk, [music] she looked up at the water tower of a nearby building.
There, a pair of peregrine falcons was nesting.
From that moment, the story changed direction.
The question was no longer, "How many more traps does New York need?"
It became, "What happens when the predators that once disappeared from the city's skies begin to return?"
What appeared on that water tower was not an ordinary bird. It was a peregrine falcon, one of the fastest and most precise predators in the sky.
In the wild, peregrine falcons often nest on high cliffs.
From there, they watch the space below, wait for prey to appear, and then dive with terrifying speed.
But in the heart of New York, there are almost no natural cliffs like that.
Instead, the city has skyscrapers, high ledges, water towers, bridges, and vertical [music] walls of concrete.
To humans, that is urban architecture.
But to falcons, those are artificial cliffs.
In a strange way, New York had become a suitable habitat for them.
The city offered high nesting sites, wide views, and a steady supply of prey, such as pigeons, starlings, and many other urban birds.
But, the return of the peregrine falcon did not happen overnight. In the middle of the 20th century, [music] this bird had nearly disappeared from many parts of the eastern United States.
One major cause was DDT, a pesticide once used widely. The chemical built up in the food chain and affected the reproduction of birds of prey, causing their eggshells to become thinner and more fragile. When eggs could no longer hatch, entire populations began to collapse.
For years, the skies that once belonged to these predators became empty.
And in that empty space, urban rats continued to thrive with almost no threat from above.
Later, as DDT was restricted and conservation programs were launched, peregrine falcons slowly began to return. But, what made their return remarkable was that they did not only come back to natural cliffs.
They entered the city. And when a pair of falcons nested near neighborhoods with high rat activity, a new layer of pressure began to appear.
At dusk, when the light begins to fade, rats often leave their hiding places to search for food. They cross open spaces between buildings and [music] trash bins, run along sidewalks, slip through empty lots, or move near parks.
That is when they are most exposed.
And that is also when falcons can [music] hunt.
A rat may be used to the sound of human footsteps. It may recognize the smell of a cat. It may avoid a dog charging from the front. It may even avoid a trap if it has seen another rat get caught [music] before.
But a dive from above is different. It does not come from the direction rats usually watch. It does not create the same signals they are used to processing. After hundreds of years of living inside the city, New York rats [music] learn to fear threats at ground level.
But they were not necessarily prepared for a shadow falling from the sky.
And peregrine falcons are not the only predators returning.
In parks and green corridors, great horned owls have also begun to play an important role.
If falcons are the danger at dusk, owls are the pressure of the night.
Great horned owls do not hunt like falcons. They do not need a spectacular dive through open air.
Their power lies in silence.
At night, when the streets become quieter and rats are more active around park edges, lawns, bushes, and dark corners, owls can fly through almost without making a sound.
For rats, sound is a survival signal.
They listen for footsteps, movement in trash, dogs running, and people approaching. But if a predator arrives without sound, darkness becomes the [music] trap.
And then there are red-tailed hawks.
If falcons create pressure at dusk and owls dominate the night, [music] red-tailed hawks add pressure during the day.
They can nest on building ledges, water towers, near parks, and around open spaces where rats sometimes still have to move.
Alone, each predator may only create a limited impact.
But when their territories overlap, the story changes.
During the day, there are hawks. At dusk, there are falcons. At night, there are owls.
This does not mean the skies of New York are wiping out millions of rats.
But in certain areas, rats may no longer have the same safe windows of time they once had.
For a species that survives through habit, fixed routes, and the ability to avoid danger, even a more unpredictable environment can change its behavior.
This is the most important point.
Birds of prey do not need to eat every rat to have an impact. They only need to make rats feel that the ground is no longer as safe as it used to be.
If an empty lot was once a familiar route, but now often has the shadow of a predator overhead, rats may avoid it.
If the edge of a park was once a good feeding area, but owls hunt there at night, they may retreat deeper into shelter.
If crossing the sidewalk becomes more dangerous, they may go out less often, move more cautiously, and reduce the time they spend exposed. And when rats appear less often on the surface, people [music] see them less often, too.
Complaints may decline, not necessarily because the entire rat population has disappeared, but because their behavior has been disrupted. Birds of prey do not need to kill large numbers of rats. They only need to restore something the city had lost for a very long time.
Fear from above.
One evening at dusk in Upper Manhattan, the researcher returned to the neighborhood where rat complaint data had been falling for several seasons.
She walked past old buildings, observing the sidewalks, building foundations, parked cars, and the gaps rats often used as travel routes.
Then, a rat appeared.
It ran across an open stretch of sidewalk between a building foundation and a parked car.
Perhaps it had used that route many times before. [music] Perhaps in the past, its greatest danger had been a pedestrian, a cat, or a trap near a trash bin.
But this time, the danger came from above.
From the water tower of a nearby building, a peregrine falcon was watching.
It did not dive immediately. It waited.
It calculated. And only when the rat had run out into the middle of the open space where there was no cover, did the falcon [music] act.
It folded its wings.
The dive happened in less than 2 seconds. It was so fast that people walking nearby barely had time to understand what had just occurred. All they saw was a dark shadow streaking down from above, a sudden rush of wind, and then the rat was gone.
The falcon disappeared just as quickly, [music] carrying its prey with it.
The sidewalk returned to normal as if the city had never been interrupted by a wild moment. But, to the researcher, those 2 seconds explained what the data had been quietly suggesting for months.
A new force was acting on the streets of New [music] York.
It did not come from the city budget. It did not come from traps, poison, or noisy extermination campaigns.
It came from an ancient hunting instinct returning to the middle of a modern city.
That moment was not just about one rat being caught. It was about an entire population of rats gradually changing their behavior.
Rats that once confidently crossed open spaces were becoming more cautious.
Familiar routes that had been used [music] daily were now being avoided.
And as rats spent less time on the surface, people saw them less often.
Not because the birds of prey had eaten all the rats, but because they had made the rats afraid. And that fear, even if it only appeared for a few seconds at a time, was enough to change the rhythm of an entire species.
However, one thing must be made clear.
Falcons, owls, and hawks are not a miracle solution.
They cannot eat all of New York's millions of rats. They cannot replace sanitation workers. They cannot make trash bags disappear from sidewalks. And they cannot repair old basements, cracked walls, or the openings rats use as shelter. If humans continue creating food for rats every night, then even with more birds of prey in the sky, the problem will remain.
A falcon can catch a rat crossing an open space.
An owl can hunt at the edge of a park at midnight.
A hawk can make rats more cautious during the day.
But if there is still a trash bag full of leftovers nearby, rats still have a reason to return.
So, where does the real value of these predators lie?
What makes New York's birds of prey different is that they are not an invasive species released [music] to fix a mistake.
They are part of the native ecosystem returning.
They do not solve the entire rat problem, but they add back a layer of balance that the city had lost for a long time.
From the ground up, New York still has to control waste, seal building entry points, reduce food sources, and make the environment less attractive to rats.
From the sky down, the city can protect parks, green corridors, rooftops, and safe nesting spaces for native predators.
One approach cuts off the rats' lifeline. The other restores their natural fear.
And when those two things happen at the same time, the war finally has a chance to [music] change. Not by killing one rat at a time, but by making New York no longer a paradise for rats.
New York has been fighting rats for decades. The city has set traps, used poison, pumped gas into burrows, hired experts, sent hunting dogs into the streets at night, redesigned trash bins, and spent tens of millions of dollars trying to control an animal that lives right beneath its feet.
But, the rats kept coming back.
Because the problem was never just a few rats running across the sidewalk.
The problem was an entire city that had accidentally created food, shelter, and safe pathways for them to multiply.
For a long time, New York had been looking in the wrong direction. [music] The city searched for answers in the sewers, in trash bins, and in traps placed close to the ground.
But, in some places, the answer appeared from above the sky.
Peregrine falcons on water towers, owls in the darkness of parks, red-tailed hawks on building ledges.
Perhaps, sometimes the best solution is not to fight harder, but to understand [music] more deeply and restore what has been lost.
New York doesn't need to find another animal to wipe out the rats.
The city needs to make itself less of a paradise for them.
And perhaps the best way to do that is to let nature do its part from above.
This story doesn't end here. It is simply a reminder that sometimes what we are looking for is not found in new solutions, but in allowing old things [music] to return to their rightful place.
What do you think?
Should New York [music] continue relying mainly on technology and extermination, or should it invest more in waste management and helping native predators return?
I'd love to hear your thoughts. Drop them in the comments [music] below.
If you enjoyed this story and found it interesting, please give the video a like.
It really helps the algorithm and lets more people discover these kinds of stories.
And if you haven't already, consider subscribing to Terra Factor and turning on the notification bell so you don't miss our upcoming videos about wildlife, ecology, and surprising stories from the natural world. Thank you so much for watching until the end. I truly appreciate your time and support. See you in the next story.
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