RAT SWIMMING IN NYC FLOOD FREE

But in those tunnels that flooded? Expect a whole lot of dead rats. And not all of the tunnels flooded, which means a whole lot of rats - soon to have more space and trash to eat - survived to breed. (That’s just one of many potential outcomes, and it’ll be interesting to see if anyone will - or even can - study it.) But the basic equation is still there: If subway flooding happened slowly, some rats were likely able to escape to the surface, where they had a better chance of surviving. If the flooding happened after dominant rats took to the surface and drove the weaklings underground to die, New York’s rat population may have just gotten stronger. Non-dominant rats would have a much harder time finding a new home. Dominant rats are more likely to be able to relocate and survive in other places where they have to compete with locals. Rats can even survive after getting flushed down toilets and somehow manage to get back into the same building. A rat can hold its breath for up to three minutes while swimming in water.

Rats are excellent swimmers and are adaptable to swimming. If the flooding started at night, it will be dominant rats on the surface, floating away into safety. Rats can swim in water for up to three days without drowning. If Sandy started to flood the tunnels during the day (and nobody knows, or makes public, this information as the subway was already closed to people by then), it will be the non-dominant rats who are on the surface, and thus more likely to survive. Subdominant (or submissive) rats are temporally displaced to the daytime shift. If the population forages on the surface, dominant rats forage during the night. When the rats are crowded, dominant rats take the best spots. And I see them every month I go up to New York. There is a rule of thumb – if you see a rat on the surface during the daylight time, this means that the underground population is enormous. As Bora Zivkovic from Scientific American pointed out in a great column: The city also declared a state of emergency. It might not have been as bad as it seems, thanks to rats’ social behavior. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency across New York City, Long Island and the Hudson Valley due to extreme rainfall and flooding. Rats are notorious for spreading disease, and as they’re displaced by flood waters, the rats that survive will venture into new areas where humans might be living and bring their infections with them.

RAT SWIMMING IN NYC FLOOD FREE

Meanwhile, with humans out of the subway, they can roam free and mate at will. Those that make it out of the flooding will be treated to a veritable feast of garbage and debris that washed into the tunnels during the hurricane. “Rats will be carried away by the current and won’t be strong enough to swim to the surface and breathe, or they’ll be pushed to grates, they will get stuck there and they won’t be strong enough to swim against the current.” A rodentologist in New York backed up Leirs’ theory, adding that young rats are particularly vulnerable and would surely drown if they weren’t carried out by their mothers.īut not all of the rats will fall victim to the disaster. “Most of the rats that are living there will actually drown,” said Herwig Leirs, a rodentologist at the University of Antwerp in Belgium.

Rat swimming in nyc flood