NYC rats are so populous, they’re almost as diverse as New Yorkers themselves. A Fordham graduate, Matthew Combs, put out a study a few years back, highlighting the genetic divide between uptown and downtown NYC rats.
Combs, along with other researchers, analyzed 262 samples from rats they captured across a two year span to discover that ones north of 59th Street genetically differ from those south of 14th street.
These brown rats have been divided into “evolutionary clusters” or subsets, mainly separated by Midtown, acting as a barrier between the uptown and downtown rats. And since rats tend to remain within 200 to 400 meters of other rats in their colony and primarily stay near to where they were born, according to Combs’ research, the two subsets tend not to mingle—even though they’re still the same species and could successfully mate.
Moreover, the differences are prevalent even by neighborhood. “If you gave us a rat, we could tell whether it came from the West Village or the East Village,” Combs once shared with The Atlantic. “They’re actually unique little rat neighbors.”
Essentially, rats found further away from one another were less genetically alike. Moreover, Comb’s tracked the global origin of most Manhattan brown rats back to Great Britain or France.
Combs also used his research as an opportunity to touch upon the “serious public health threat” urban rats pose. “They carry several zoonotic diseases that we are worried about. So the more we know about how they move, how these colonies interact, the better we can create management strategies to stop them.”
To handle NYC’s rat problem, a rat czar was hired in back in 2023 to win the war against rats. Kathleen Corradi was selected to fill the position and has already coordinated a citywide mitigation strategy, begun “rat walks” in various NYC neighborhoods to educate residents and city officials about their rat neighbors’ habits, and introduced new solutions like rat birth control.
You can keep tabs on NYC’s rats using this app that tracks their whereabouts specifically in subway stations.