"You can find newspaper articles going back decades that mentioned the war on rats in New York City," Munshi-South said. With abundant garbage available to them, city rats might not go after wildlife in the same numbers. However, if all rats in NYC died tomorrow it would still save a lot of animals like birds, coyotes, foxes, and feral cats that die each year from rodenticide, the poison used to kill rats, Munshi-South said. Mary Altaffer/APAs scavengers, rats likely play some role in helping remove garbage from city streets and distributing seeds, Byers said. In her research, "we found that folks experienced a number of mental-health impacts from living alongside rats," Byers said, including stress and anxiety.

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Persons: —, it's, Kaylee Byers, Jason Munshi, Munshi, Denis de Marney, Byers, Mary Altaffer, Wolfram Steinberg, we're Organizations: Service, Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative, Fordham University, The New York Times, they've Locations: North America, York City, It's, British Columbia, New York City, Norway, East Coast, Iowa, , New York, rodenticide