Why we still don’t really understand city rats – and how we can change that

You know the kind of job.
Same account for years. Same alleys, same basement, same complaints.
You’ve sealed gaps, fixed doors, moved dumpsters, set traps, rotated tools. The problem gets better… then it’s back. The tenants are frustrated. The managers are frustrated.
You’re frustrated.

From the outside it can look like “someone isn’t doing their job.” From the inside, it feels more like we’re being asked to solve a problem nobody fully understands.

This piece is about that feeling, and about why it’s not a failure on your side when rats keep breaking the rules you have learned.

“We’re doing everything right. Why is this still happening?”

For decades, rats have been some of the most studied animals in the world.
We know a lot from laboratories: how rats learn in mazes, how they respond to new foods, how diseases behave in controlled settings. But lab rats are raised in clean, controlled conditions.
City rats are not.

• living behind walls, under sidewalks, in aging infrastructure;
• feeding from trash, pet food, grain, and who-knows-what;
• moving through a maze of public and private spaces you don’t fully control.

Researchers have a hard time getting repeated access to those places. Property owners and agencies are under pressure to show quick results. Nobody gets rewarded for leaving rats in place longer so someone can study them.

The invisible part of the job: a knowledge problem, not just a service problem

On paper, a lot of accounts look simple:

• too much food available;
• too many harborage spots;
• too many entry points.

Control the food, tighten the structure, deploy devices, maybe use rodenticides where appropriate, and you are done.
In the real world, there are extra questions that are still hard to answer:

• When are the rats actually moving through this space?
• Which routes do they favor when conditions change?
• How does the group react when a dominant animal is removed?
• What happens when construction starts two blocks away?

Technicians and operators notice patterns, but there isn’t always a place to capture and share those observations in a way that turns them into real evidence.
So every team re-learns the same lessons, site by site, city by city. A lot of that knowledge stays in notebooks, text threads, and people’s heads.

Where you fit in: not just “the exterminator,” but the field expert

If you work in rodent control, you are already doing small experiments every day:

• You change placement and watch what happens.
• You switch devices and track callbacks.
• You work out which accounts fight back hardest when the weather shifts.

Most of that is not called “research.” It is just you trying to get the job done.
The idea behind projects like EUREKA is simple:
What if the work you are already doing could count twice – once as service, and once as data we can all learn from?

“But what do I get out of it?”

You already juggle callbacks, staff shortages, equipment, regulations, customer expectations, and your own safety. Why add “help build a better knowledge base” on top of that?

A few reasons that can matter in practice:

• Better tools over time – researchers stop guessing based on lab rats and start building tools around what you deal with daily.
• Stronger story for your clients – data-backed guidance builds trust.
• Recognition as more than a vendor – PMPs treated as partners in public health and urban planning.
• Less wasted effort – fewer repeated short-term fixes for chronic problems.

What “participating in the science” actually looks like

Clean, consistent logs – using a digital log or app so that catches, sightings, and conditions are recorded in a standard way.

A few “special” sites – choosing some of your hardest accounts and treating them as joint projects between you, your client, and a research or public health partner.

Clear boundaries and protections – written agreements about monitoring, data use, and participation limits.

A different way to look at your next tough account

The next time you walk into a building that has “always” had rats, it is natural to feel that familiar mix of determination and dread.
Try adding one more thought:
“What could we learn here that would help us and others, if this account did not have to stand alone?”

Maybe that means tightening up how you log what you already see.
Maybe it means nominating the site for a pilot project.
Maybe it just means being open, when someone asks, to letting your day-to-day experience count as part of a bigger effort to understand city rats for real.

Rats are not going away. But your work already holds many of the clues we have been missing. The point of EUREKA is not to tell you how to do your job. It is to make sure the effort you are putting in can finally add up to more than one account at a time.

This content was inspired by Parsons et al. (2017): Trends in urban rat ecology. Journal of Urban Ecology, 3, jux005.