Why are there so many chicken bones on the street? (Part 2)

0:00Welcome to Search Engine, I'm PJ Vogt. Each week, we try to answer a question we have about the world. No question too big, no question too small. This week, part two of our expose. Why are there so many chicken bones on the street? That's after some ads.

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1:45Welcome back, guys. Thank you. Do you guys mind just reintroducing yourselves? Sure thing. My name is Manny. Last time I was talking about the changes in my neighborhood that I thought was leading to chicken bones ending up on the streets. I'm Noah. I did lots of research on the history of chickens and why we eat them now. And I'm Devin. I looked into what animals may be the culprit for chicken bones. All the things that aren't around. There's a long list. Okay, so what have you guys? Tell me of your experiment. So, since our last conversation, we decided to go with the GoPro option, which is literally just buying chicken wings and dropping them in front of a camera and seeing what happens.

2:32But we decided to run this experiment by a rat expert. Yeah. You know, all three of us interviewed him. Naturally. But, you know, I'm the animal guy, so I took the lead. The wrangler. Yeah, the wrangler. So, this guy, he's a scientist. He studies biology. really focuses on rats living in urban areas. Okay. And he's actually gotten federal funding to study this.

3:01You just introduced yourself and tell us a bit about what you do. Yeah, sure. I'm Jason Munchy-South. I'm a professor of biology at Fordham University. I've been there since 2013. Before that, I was a professor at CUNY in New York City. and I have a long-running interest in how animals adapt and thrive in urban areas. So Jason studies, like, all kinds of urban animals, but he said when he moved to New York for work, like, everyone just kept asking him about rats. Yeah. So he figured, like, okay, maybe I should just focus on them. I decided, you know, why don't we try to understand something about how rats are living in New York City?

3:42How are they moving around? You know, there's all this kind of like folk wisdom about how rats use the city. You know, they're moving through sewers and subway tunnels and that sort of thing. But there hadn't really been much effort by scientists to actually figure out if that's what they do. So we wanted to get Jason's advice on our experiment as a rat expert. But first, we just wanted to make sure we had like a basic understanding of like rats. So he gave us a couple of things, some information that we want to share with you. First of all, the rat that we see in New York City, it is not an American rat.

4:20In New York City, we're talking about the brown rat or the Norway rat. It's not actually from Norway originally. I don't really know why it has that name. They originated in East Asia, probably in northern China, along waterways, in grassy areas. And then as humans develop agriculture in that part of the world, they became accustomed to living around people and feeding on cultivated grain. and then they spread throughout China into Southeast Asia and then followed coastal routes along India up into the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. We don't know exactly when, but, you know, several hundred years ago.

4:55Not as long as you'd think, actually, for this species. Maybe like the 1500s they get to Europe. And then by the 1700s, they've been moved, you know, all over the world by European empires mostly because they're quite able to survive long ship voyages once they get on the ship.

5:17So they just follow, it's basically like they're much more recent than I would have realized, and they just follow trade. Like they just follow human trade. Yeah, you know, because we have, we're really nice to the rats. We leave them lots of goodies. And another thing he told us that we thought was super interesting is that he thinks the number of rats in New York is, like, way lower than the estimates that are out there. A lot of the estimates we found were saying that there were 2 to 3 million rats in the city. But Jason said it's actually, like, really hard to figure out exactly how many rats there are with, like, a good amount of certainty.

5:55And in his professional opinion, the number of rats in the city is probably closer to, like, a few hundred thousand. Oh, yeah. My assumption would be that they outnumber us. But it sounds like Jason thinks they don't even remotely outnumber us. Yeah, he said if there were that many rats, like, we'd basically be just tripping over rats. Okay, okay. I didn't think that I would feel relief. That's great. Okay, so what else did you guys learn from him? Yeah, so we wanted to present to him our hypothesis and also some of our, who we thought the culprits were. Yeah. And I remember last time we had this conversation, it was kind of silly us going through the list until we got to rats.

6:32But he actually confirmed to us that there are, like, squirrels, for example, raccoons, like, those animals are probably likely also experimenting with chicken bones in the city. Experimenting with chicken bones? Chicken bones are a gateway drug to other human foods.

6:58Okay, so, you know, so Jason here, he is a rat expert. And he did actually think our theory was pretty plausible. And once again, the theory that there's a sizable percentage of the chicken bones on the street are a result of rats. Let me just actually play you what he said. Yeah. I think it's a good hypothesis. So in my adult life, I have lived for some span of time in Chicago, D.C., and New York. And now I live in Stanford, Connecticut. every single one of those cities has had an unusually large number of chicken bones on the street i'd say stanford has the least and also has the least rats of those three but chicago dc and new york are all big rat cities and all big chicken bone cities and i've actually thought about this myself going back years um and i've heard the same thing from friends that own dogs over and over again that they're constantly pulling chicken bones out of their dogs mouths By the end of our conversation with Jason, we were gathering so many insightful, nuanced facts that I was like, oh no, we're about to drop the dumbest proposal.

8:04Which is just to put a camera up and see what happens. But to our surprise, he was like, yeah, that's exactly what you should do. Oh, really? He was like, that's probably the best way to observe this. He gave us a couple of pointers. So we originally just were going to put chicken wings in a bag and throw them out there and record it with a GoPro. But he gave us a few tips on making it a little bit more realistic of an experiment. The first tip was that we should put other trash into the trash bag with the chicken bones. The second tip was to put it in a place that's like familiar for the rats.

8:36And then the third was that if we were successful in finding that rats took and ate our chicken bones, to check the bones for little rat bite marks. So if you want to pick it up and look at it, which is not a desire I've ever had, you would actually see many teeth marks. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Disgusting.

8:59So one evening, after we talked to the rat expert, we procured the GoPro cameras to set up our little experiment. I took one of the cameras, I think it was around 6 p.m., and I went outside of my apartment. I'm kind of, you know, looking around. Like, I don't want to be setting this up while people are walking by. So I'm doing some double takes. I look very suspicious at this point. And then I put my bag of chicken under a trash can. And then I put my camera under the trash can behind it just so that no one could even see it while they walk by. And on my way inside, I cross paths with my super who's on his way out.

9:40I'm like, okay, I mean, this is bad timing, but we're going to be fine. and he's not going to see anything. The fear was that he would, what was the fear? My fear was that he would just see my setup and be like, what the hell is this, rightfully. Yes. And then take it away. Oh, he would just be like, man, he's filming the trash can for some reason. Yeah. And he doesn't have permission to do that. Yeah, in my head, there's a million things like, this guy's trying to catch me doing something. The setup doesn't necessarily look like it's filming the trash. Yeah, and usually in a city or anywhere, when you are in a place and you just see a camera, you're like, someone's trying to tell me not to do something.

10:17You don't think someone's trying to study rats.

10:23So I get up to my apartment. I live on the fourth floor, and right outside of my window, I can look down into the trash can area. Yeah, beautiful. And when I do that, he found myself. Oh, no. So what was happening? So he's picking up the bag. He's looking at the bottom of it. He's looking around to see, like, who left this there? Because, like, to be fair, like, it's trash that is on the ground next to a trash can. So I talk to Dem and Noah. They're like, sorry, but you got to go talk to this guy. And I go downstairs while he's still kind of fidgeting with the stuff. And I decide to record the conversation.

11:00You recorded the conversation? I recorded the conversation. I think we should play the recording. I would love to hear the recording. It's a weird question, but I think you might have found my camera. Is it in the trash? No. Oh. There goes the camera? No, I set one up to, this is so weird, but I work for NBC, and I'm doing a project about whether rats like chicken bones. Oh, good. It really highlights that, like, there's certain things that if you're doing them as part of your job, it's basically fine, and if you're doing it as a person, it's, like, so much stranger. Yeah. Like, you're just like, I just needed to know this.

11:34I can't remember a more, like, humiliating, like, experience than trying to describe this study to my super. I didn't want you to think I was doing anything crazy. They come to this garbage game, the rats? That's why I have that stick there, so I hit them. Oh, that stick is for hitting the rats. That's crazy. He's got a rat hitting stick? I've seen this stick every day. I didn't know what it was for. It's the rat stick. It's to hit the rats. Okay, thank you. Sorry about that. Yeah, it's for a podcast. I work for MC, but we're doing a podcast for this podcast called Search Engine. It's pretty popular.

12:12I can send you the link when it's done. Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah. That's cool. Thank you. I'm going to get some more wings. So why did you have to get more wings, Manny? He threw my first wings away. By the time I got back, like when I'm in my apartment looking down, he's like, you know, inspecting the wings. It just looked weird. By the time I got down there, he threw them away and it took them to the garbage in the sidewalk. And so I go to get more wings. Yeah. I put him back in front of the camera, which is still recording. And my super is still out there. Yeah. And he mentions that actually I missed my window.

12:48The rats had come in the time where you just went to the chicken wings? No, I'm just like hours late. If I want to catch rats on camera, they've already come and gone because he knows their exact schedule. Did they come out at this time of day, this summer night? No, they come out early. Oh, so maybe I missed them. Because now the test was out at 8 in the new law. So I think the rats would change their schedule. Oh, the rats might have changed their schedule because of the trash. Yeah. It goes out later. It goes out later. They ate outside of the street. Uh-huh. That's interesting. Oh, wow. So basically, you know, I'm going to do the experiment anyways, but he's telling me it's probably not going to work because the rats came out way earlier.

13:27He knows their schedule. He knows their schedule. Sure enough, I import the footage into my computer. No rats come after my chicken wings. And so now I know that Devin is doing his experiment on the same night, and he's kind of our last chance.

13:47Yeah, so I was a bit worried because Manny Super said that the rats came already. I was like, I don't know if those are only his rats. It's like a citywide rat schedule. Are my rats on a different schedule? But I put it out there, did a similar thing, put my bag on the ground next to the trash can. was trying to figure out where to put the GoPro so that someone wouldn't steal it because there are a lot of kids in my building too and they like to play in the alley. But I recorded the process too of me setting it up. There's this alleyway and all the garbage cans are kind of lined up against the wall and the rats run along the backside of the wall so I have it set up along that backside.

14:28So I'll come back in like an hour and check on it. And then came down about an hour later. And similar to Manny, I was like, oh, my bag is gone. Oh. The whole bag is gone. Did somebody throw it out? I guess I got to look at the footage and see what happened.

14:55Which is weird because I don't have, like, a super in my building. We have, like, people who come and, like, take out the trash. But they had already done that because there was already trash on the curb. And I'm like, this building, no one is just nice and, like, picks up the trash and, like, puts it in a can. Yeah. So I literally looked in every single garbage can to be like, where did they throw it out? So your assumption, even though it's just because the entire bag is gone, your assumption is that a human has done this. Oh, of course. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like, you know, it was a big enough bag and, like, there were no remnants of anything.

15:27So I assumed like someone just picked it up and threw it out. But I got the GoPro, looked at the footage to just be like, all right, like which idiot from my building did this? So I'll send you the video. Ooh. So I haven't hit play yet, but it's just like your alleyway, some graviti and like three gray bins. And then, oh, you highlighted the bag. It's like in between two of the recycling bins. Exactly. Okay, should I hit play? Yeah, let's do it in three, two, one. Go.

16:00Okay. Oh, I see gray rat-like shapes. Oh, they're moving in. They're, like, investigating the scene. Like, they haven't really gone for the bag yet. Have they? Oh, they're, like, is he ripping it open, the rat? Oh, my God. He just, like, swiped the bag. Like, he pulled it behind the bin, and then he's just, like, off with it.

16:26So I watched that video and I was like, oh wait, so the rats did take the bag, but they moved it obviously somewhere. So I did go down and tried to find the bag to see like what did they do with it. Yeah. Okay. I found the bag. Oh my God. And I found chicken bones. Oh my God. This is it. Ladies and gentlemen, we got it, Molly.

16:57So you'd had a bag full of bones. Were there, like, were there bones outside the bag? Like, were they spread out? Like, what did it look like? The bag was completely torn apart. And there were, I put a lot more bones in there. So there were a lot of bones that weren't even there. So I don't even know where, like, half of the bones actually ended up. So I'll send you that video. Oh, here we go. Okay. So this is your, like, next day surveillance? Yeah. Oh, there's bones. There's splintered chicken bones. They're just like really, they really pulverize these things. So they really ripped it apart.

17:33And, you know, you can see in a video that they're taking the bag from sort of like the open area and they kind of go and hide behind the recycling where you can't see it from the view of the GoPro. And Jason, we asked Jason, like, why would they move the bag? Like, why wouldn't they just eat the chicken bones there? And he was like, well, they're usually trying to find, like, a safe spot if they're going to eat things. Which was also interesting when we were talking to him. He said that, like, in his research, he found that near rat burrows, there were chicken bones. Oh, interesting. So they sort of take it a little bit to, like, a safer place, and then they go in on it.

18:08And then Jason mentioned in our interview that to look for rat bites. And just as, like, a cautionary measure, we sent Jason over email the pictures. And he's like, yeah, these definitely have rat bites on them. Oh, wow. Okay. So he confirms. Yeah, it's confirmed.

18:29If this was a trial, rats would be found guilty. It's like you have evidence of the thing on videotape. You have physical evidence. You have expert testimony. Like, I feel pretty good about this. Yeah. And I think this is more evidence than any of us were anticipating going into this. Oh, definitely. Especially after talking to Jason, because, okay, that's maybe the best we're going to get is find some chicken bones and be like, hey, are these rat bite marks? But to me, it was just sort of like, okay, we just put a bag down one night and we were able to, like, get this evidence. It's funny. It also makes me feel slightly differently.

19:00I have, in the past, I'll be walking down the sidewalk and I'll see a bunch of chicken bones strewn and I'll be like, ugh. And I'll just feel frustrated because my brain will conjure this image of some person, like, eating a chicken bone and Homer Simpson, like, just throwing it over their shoulder onto the street. now if I see chicken bones on the street I get to know that it's not a human being not caring about their environment I do have to know that it's like a band of ravaging rats they're starving they're starving what are they going to do? and next time you do see it I don't know if you'll be so inclined but bend down and see if there's see if there's some bite marks on that send you guys a picture yeah

19:50Has spending this much time thinking and talking about rats, are you guys less grossed out by rats now or same amount? Or were you, like, what has this done to that? Yeah, there's a layer of, like, props. Like, yeah, go do, you know, you're going to, you need to eat, so do I. Yeah, in the abstract, talking now, yes, definitely. That said, I'd kind of have to see how I actually feel once the rat is in front of me. Yeah, I mean, I definitely have a, you know, just like I learned and respect the chicken a lot more. Similarly, the rat, I mean, they're trying to survive just like us. Yeah. You know, in real life, it's like any person you meet, too.

20:25The more you get to know them, the easier it is to like them. You understand them. Yeah. Not that I'm, like, going around, like, wanting to be friends with rats. But I just mean, like, it helps a little bit. Yeah, I feel like the feeling I usually have when I see a rat is, like, intruder. I'm like, you're not supposed to be here. Go away. I hope you die. Which is like not a great pain of thought for a person to have. And I'm like, okay, like they're just trying to make it work. They're eating the meat off the bones that we're done with. I'm not gonna invite them into my house, but like, they have as much right to be here as I do.

20:56Yeah. In a way, we're sharing our meals. We're not at the table together, but like, they're finishing off our foods. You're throwing them a bone.

21:12If people would like to follow you guys on more of your investigatory adventures, how can they do that? Yeah, they can go to mannynoahdevin.com. You guys really were not able to come up with a name for the unit yet. This was our placeholder name. This is going to be the best thing we have so far. It's a real website, mannynoahdevin.com. Devin is spelled D-E-V-A-N. Okay. So we just had so much fun doing this. We want to keep doing more investigations of this style. So if you go to our website, you can see our surveillance videos and other stuff we accrued making this and get a taste of future questions and investigations we'll be working on soon.

21:56Cool. So Manny, Noah, is it Manny, Noah, and Devin.com? No, no, no. Manny, Noah, it's Devin.com. Devin, D-E-V-A-N. That's right. There you go.