Pest Control’s A Tough Game, But It’s Winnable
Strategizing For Success
Rats aren’t masters of strategy games like chess, but if you’ve ever tried to get rid of them on your own, it may feel as though they are. This is because conventional understanding of rodent intelligence underestimates them on a regular basis. Consider rat poison, as an example. Rats are designed to eat garbage. But if anything can “smell a rat”, it’s another rat.
There’s a great documentary that circulated NetFlix during the Christmas season of 2016 called “Rats”. In that documentary, a professional exterminator describes rodent behavior. He points out that when rats suspect food might be tainted, they send in a weaker—or less “dominant”—member of their group to see if the food is poisoned.
Should the rat stooge bite the bullet, then the other rats avoid t...