Rats have long been associates of human populations, thriving in the mess that we generally create. Although rats numbers are often over-estimated by media reports, this species has an impressive reproductive rate (a male/female pair could generate around 15,000 offspring in a single year- not that they operate as mum/dad pairs!). Rats can generate substantial losses of stored materials (they can climb and squeeze through very narrow gaps) but their most important detrimental effect on our populations is as carriers of a range of diseases (it has been estimated that these kill around 25 million people, across the globe, annually). Rat catchers (or, as they are now termed, pest control operatives) have tried to deal with rat infestations for hundreds of years but have generally been defeated by the animal's wariness of rat poison bait and the ability of their populations to rapidly 'bounce back'. A new technique has been advocated by the US startup company SenesTech (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/20/man-v-rat-war-could-the-long-war-soon-be-over). This company, ran by a Dr Mayer, has developed a liquid they call ContraPest that interferes with birth control in the rodent. This has been shown to reduce some rat populations by 40% within a few weeks. They might well 'think it's all over' but there might be remaining problems. Bait wariness might mean that the reproduction inhibitor is not ingested by all rats, meaning that the populations could come back (perhaps with increased bait avoidance). The other problem is that ContraPest might end up inhibiting reproduction in some animals (humans?) we would not like to see affected.
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