I know these are used with great success in Norway: <a href="https://youtu.be/rfT9orf5Qrg" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/rfT9orf5Qrg</a><p>Sensors detect the rat and kills it immediately. Then it’s flushed out with other sewage. It also keeps count of how many rats are killed, which gives the city some numbers to use in their estimations.
So, is calling 311 the only way to report on such an important yet simple (not really requiring verbal explanation nor personal data about the witness) subject? I would never call a telephone unless the rats or whatever were actually threatening a life and I were sure I can't manage on my own. C'mon, it's 2018, people are using apps (anonymously if possible) and texting each other, if somebody actually calls me I expect them to be either dying or trying to sell me something I don't need! Why not just make an app that lets you take a picture and send it with a timestamp and the location data (and nothing else) embedded straight to the server?
The city is hiring exterminators. They are using technology to make the people dispatching those exterminators more efficient or effective.<p>If the city were serious about getting rid of rats they'd provide incentives for or otherwise subsidize behavior that helps solve the problem (which is very different from penalizing behavior that doesn't, I know those two often get confused around here). I'm not seeing any evidence of such based on this article which leads me to believe this is probably not an effective use of available resources. Efficient exterminators and other silver bullets don't usually do a good job solving big problems in the long term.
> <i>got a new galvanized steel can, even though the trash crew won’t empty it</i><p>I don't understand this bit. Why wouldn't they empty it? It seems like metal bins would be a fine solution to rats chewing through them.
I think a simpler solution is that people and restaurants throw their trash in closed trash bins. Rats eat food which are thrown on the ground or otherwise easily accessible.<p>I believe that some people in big cities has lost a sense of community. Thus some throw food on the ground that the rats eat.<p>To get rid of rats cities need to be cleaner.
elsewhere on the planet , some rats being trained to be productive members of human society :)<p><a href="https://scitechafrica.com/2016/04/16/super-rats-are-eliminating-landmines-from-mozambique-and-detecting-tuberculosis-in-tanzania/" rel="nofollow">https://scitechafrica.com/2016/04/16/super-rats-are-eliminat...</a>
Why not stop using poison and just let some cats lose. My city ally has a healthy cat population most of which have been TNR'ed. The only rat I've ever seen was the severed heard of one that some kittens were devouring on the pavement.
There are rats in my neighborhood of DC, but I haven't seen cans chewed into. The so-called "Supercans" were supposed to have been harder for rats to get into.
It seems to me that "continually kill large numbers of X" is an inherently broken solution to "I don't want X to live here".<p>If you have large numbers of X, it's because you're creating a very favorable habitat for it. If you don't address that issue and just keep killing them, you'll have both large numbers of X and large numbers of X corpses.<p>There are also arguably ethical issues with killing huge numbers of intelligent, social animals simply because we don't like their presence.
Why do we always declare war on things we know we can’t possibly beat? Drugs... rats... terror... might as well declare war on entropy and human nature. Rats will be here long after we’re gone, and until then we’ll never be far from them; such is life.