Regardless of political affiliation, "the brown rats of New York are struggling just as hard (as humans) to adapt to urban existence."

Long before COVID-19, Rattus norvegicus had been cleared of history's major charge: the Black Death was spread by humans not rats.

They got a bum rat.

The ostensible reason for this post? Vindication for the rat, but scroll down for the subsidiary purpose.

Rats have other problems now.

Beer and bagels please: New York rats evolve to mirror human habits, by Robin McKie (The Guardian)

Changes in rodents’ DNA means they are now prone to similar health threats to humans, scientists discover

Humans are not alone in suffering from the stresses of modern city life.

Researchers have found the brown rats of New York are struggling just as hard to adapt to urban existence.

Indeed it is possible, they say, that both humans and rats have undergone parallel shifts in their genetic make-up in response to city life, leaving them prone to similar health threats, such as the effects of pollutants and the consumption of highly sugared foods.

“We know rats have changed in incredible ways in their behaviour and in their diet, just as human communities have changed,” said Arbel Harpak, a population geneticist at the New York’s Columbia University. “In New York you can see them eat bagels and beer; in Paris they like croissants and butter. They adapt in amazing ways.”

snip

The crucial point, say the researchers, is that urban rats are so closely associated with human city-dwellers that it is possible similar genetic changes have occurred in both species. “Like humans, rats live in higher densities in cities, leading to increased pathogen transmission potential,” they argue. “In addition, mosquito species that have rapidly invaded urban areas across the world feed on both rats and humans – suggesting a novel, shared-disease exposure.”

The most striking common feature of the lives of urban humans and urban rats is diet, the researchers discovered: both consume an increasingly large amount of highly processed sugars and fats. Such a diet leads to various health concerns, which could also apply to rats.

Sunday morning coming down: The Black Death, a bum rat and the Danse Macabre.

It isn't the best BBC documentary I've ever watched, seeing as I tend to frown on period piece recreations. However, it is decently informative and thought-provoking in places, as when surviving peasants in England suddenly realize their economic prospects have vastly improved since the number of competing laborers was halved.

A more concise overview is here, including brief treatments of other pandemics:

This apparently precedes new research findings, as noted in this space last year.

They got a bum rat.

Rats were not to blame for the spread of plague during the Black Death, according to a study.

The rodents and their fleas were thought to have spread a series of outbreaks in 14th-19th Century Europe.

But a team from the universities of Oslo and Ferrara now says the first, the Black Death, can be "largely ascribed to human fleas and body lice".

There's much written about the Black Death in Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, which remains an excellent introduction to the late medieval period. Not only that, but no discussion about the Black Death is complete without a reference to the Danse Macabre, a medieval allegory about the inevitability of death.

In the Danse Macabre, or Dance of Death, skeletons escort living humans to their graves in a lively waltz. Kings, knights, and commoners alike join in, conveying that regardless of status, wealth, or accomplishments in life, death comes for everyone. At a time when outbreaks of the Black Death and seemingly endless battles between France and England in the Hundred Years’ War left thousands of people dead, macabre images like the Dance of Death were a way to confront the ever-present prospect of mortality.

They got a bum rat.

The ostensible reason for this post? Vindication for the rat, but scroll down for the subsidiary purpose.

Black Death 'spread by humans not rats', by Victoria Gill (BBC News)

Rats were not to blame for the spread of plague during the Black Death, according to a study.

The rodents and their fleas were thought to have spread a series of outbreaks in 14th-19th Century Europe.

But a team from the universities of Oslo and Ferrara now says the first, the Black Death, can be "largely ascribed to human fleas and body lice".

The study, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, uses records of its pattern and scale.

The Black Death claimed an estimated 25 million lives, more than a third of Europe's population, between 1347 and 1351.

One simply cannot miss an opportunity to remind the world about the existence of Brennivín, or Black Death schnapps from Iceland. It's what you do on a snow DAY, not to mention all winter long UP NORTH.

One evening, Einar came out from his basement lair, brandishing a sea-glass green bottle with a black label that read “Brennivín.”

“Want to drink some Black Death?” he asked.

“What the fuck is that?” one of our friends blurted.

Without waiting for the answer, the four people huddled in the kitchen unanimously agreed that we did. Visions of my Nordic former-roommate staring at his computer screen licking flecks of dried fish flakes off his fingertips flashed before my eyes while he opened the bottle. It seemed unlikely to me that anything out of Einar’s homeland would be delicious. I recalled too, the urban legend—I could only assume it amounted to as much—of fermented slabs of shark served for dinner. I don’t remember what we drank the Black Death out of—glasses, shots, or swigs from the bottle perhaps—but it tasted like licorice. I later learned that it is known as Brennivín, an unsweetened schnapps made out of potato mash that is flavored with caraway seeds, cumin, angelica, and a slew of other herbs native to Iceland. What I do recall from that evening involved hightailing it out of the party and into a cab back to my house in Northern Manhattan where I, inexplicably invigorated, spent the next two hours trying to master the complicated clapping rhythm that begins around 4:26 of Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman.” Einar never explained why it’s locally referred to as the “Black Death” amongst Icelanders, but perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the name, Brennivín, translates into “burning wine.” The beverage tastes more like mild rye licorice than liquefied bubonic plague.