A study is done in the urban city Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2012 about helminths-carrying rats in two different areas in the city, the wet market in Chow kit and the more affluent area at Bangsar with mixed residential sites. At Bangsar, restaurants and roadside stalls sell cooked food and rodents used the leftovers as a dominant source of nutrition. These disease-carrying rats occupy wall cavities, paneling of buildings, refuse and garbage tips and stores. The point of the study is to compare the proportion of helminths between the rats of two opposite sites. The result yields an interesting insight. Even though Bangsar is considerably cleaner compared to Chow Kit, and even though fewer rats were collected from Bangsar than from Chow Kit, there was no difference in helmonths recovered from each of the two sites. Moreover, the rats from Bangsar are larger and more aggressive, these typical brown rats burrow together with more disease-proned black rats and are more resistant to weather extremes. Yet, it is shown that due to the management policy of rodents in Bangsar, the rate of disease transmission was kept down.
The importance of this research paper brings about great similarities to New York City’s rat controlling situation, despite the discrepancy in weather between the two regions. Even though city rats are maybe more resistant to harsh city weather, more aggressive, and carrying more diseases than rats from less populated areas, with effecting rodents and disease management policy from the city, the rate of disease transmission can be checked effectively.
Source: Mohd Zain, Siti N, Jerzy M Behnke, and John W Lewis. “Helminth communities from two urban rat populations in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.” Mohd Zain et al. Parasites & Vectors 5:47 (2012): 23. Print.
