New York and rats is a long story. Also disgusting. But above all it is a struggle without barracks for trying to end a plague that does not stop reproducing from God knows when. Last year the photo was, if possible, a little more tremendous: they were no longer rats, They were super -trarates and a notice for the rest of large cities. In 2025 a red line was reached: they were growing at 300% And nobody had the slightest idea of how to avoid it.
Now we have a clue: it turns out that they have their own language.
An unexpected emblem. From its origins as new Amsterdam in the seventeenth century, New York has accumulated iconic symbols that identify it in the collective imaginary: the “I ❤ NY” shirts, the pizza, Broadway. But he has also lived with a much less glamorous companion and persistently associated with his identity: The damn rats.
It is calculated that today Three million are arounda figure equivalent to a third of the human population of the city, and that are an inseparable part of the urban ecosystem. That ubiquitous character makes them object of study privileged to understand how animal life adapts to the city and how the limits between the human and the wild blur in large urban concentrations.
An innovative study. Thus, a team of scientists from New York and Germany it was proposed to analyze the behavior of the Rattus norvegicus New York using avant -garde technologies. Namely: artificial intelligence to identify movement patterns, thermal cameras to follow ultrasonic displacements and recordings to capture their vocalizations. The objective was to verify to what extent these urban rats differed from the profiles described in general studies on the species.
The results, published in The Biorxiv platformthey have shown that rats modulate their “language” dynamically, adjusting their ultrasonic chillidos to The intensity of ambient noise that surrounds them. On the surface, in parks and sidewalks, they communicated with less power, while in the bustle of the subway the intensity of their vocalizations shot to be heard among the rumble of trains and crowds.
An adapted language. Thanks to deep neuronal networks that allowed to analyze spectrograms and measure acoustic differences, the researchers verified that the vocalizations of New York rats They were of shorter duration and were outside the frequency ranges typically described for the species in other contexts. It was, in short, own languageborn of the need to be heard in a deafening metropolis.
One of the researchers, Emily Mackevicius, He related an example Revealing: In the full step of an ambulance, the ultrasonic squeaky of rodents appeared in the spectrogram above the siren, inaudible shouts for the human ear but effective in their universe. The rats, in other words, had learned to raise your voice about the noise of the city.
Amazing (or acongojante).
Social dynamics. Plus: the Video observations They also contributed keys to the social life of rodents. Young specimens, even in learning of fodder strategies, They moved in a groupin contrast to adults, more lonely.
This difference suggests a flexible social structure adapted to experience and the need for protection. The researchers They underline That, beyond the usual cartoon of the New York rodent as a plague, its behavior reveals complex cognitive and social dynamics that deserve to be understood in their own ecological context.
The biology of cities. He Rat study New York points to a broader challenge: understanding the biology of urban environments as an essential field of research for the future. If by 2050 almost seven out of ten people They will live in citiesthe interaction with species adapted to these habitats will be, if it fits, more and more intense. Animals that survive and thrive in the city, from rats to pigeons, foxes or mapaches, are not mere uncomfortable companions, but actors of a shared ecosystem.
The finding that New York rodents have developed own languageadjusted to the noise of the metropolis, not only illuminates its ability to adapt, but also raises a most disturbing mirror: the city itself molds the voices and behaviors of those who inhabit it, humans and animals equally, in a continuous biological experiment that defines the present and anticipates the future of urban life.
Image | G. Scott Segler, Caruba
In Xataka | NEW YORK LIVES A PLAGA OF SUPERRATES. It is a notice for the rest of the big cities
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