You’ve seen the videos. A rodent the size of a small loaf of bread drags a slice of pizza down the subway stairs, or maybe one just casually scuttles across a sidewalk in the West Village while tourists shriek. It’s a classic trope. But lately, big rats in New York City feel less like a punchline and more like a genuine urban crisis that the city can't quite shake.
They’re everywhere.
The sightings have spiked, and honestly, the rats seem less afraid of us than they used to be. During the pandemic, when the outdoor dining sheds popped up like mushrooms across the five boroughs, the rats basically got a permanent VIP pass to an all-you-can-eat buffet. It changed things. It changed the way they move, how they breed, and how they interact with the millions of humans sharing their zip codes.
The "Rat Tsar" and the war on trash
For decades, NYC treated pest control like a game of Whac-A-Mole. You poison a few here, you trap a few there, but the population just rebounds. That changed—or at least the strategy did—when Mayor Eric Adams appointed Kathleen Corradi as the city's first-ever "Rat Tsar" (officially the Director of Rodent Mitigation) in 2023. Corradi wasn't just hired to kill rats; she was hired to starve them.
The city finally realized that you can't kill your way out of a rat problem if you're still leaving "black gold"—giant bags of leaking trash—on the curb for 12 hours a day.
It's about the calories.
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The Department of Sanitation has been aggressively rolling out new containerization rules. If you own a business, you can't just pile bags on the sidewalk anymore. You need bins. Hard-sided, lidded, rat-proof bins. It sounds simple, right? It’s actually a logistical nightmare for a city built before modern trash trucks existed, but it’s the only way to actually reduce the number of big rats in New York City. If they can’t eat, they can’t breed. And boy, do they breed fast.
Why the rats look like they're on steroids
Let’s clear something up: New York doesn't actually have giant mutant rats. Not really.
The species we’re dealing with is the Rattus norvegicus, or the Brown Rat. They generally top out at about a pound, maybe 16 ounces. People swear they’ve seen rats the size of house cats, but that’s usually an optical illusion caused by fluff, a long tail, and the sheer terror of a rodent jumping out of a dumpster at 11:00 PM.
However, they are well-fed.
A rat in a rural area has to work for its meals. A rat in Brooklyn just needs to find a discarded Shake Shack bag. This high-protein, high-fat diet makes them robust. It makes them healthy. Researchers like Dr. Jason Munshi-South, a biology professor at Fordham University who has spent years studying the genetics of NYC rats, have found that these populations are incredibly resilient. They’ve evolved to thrive in the concrete jungle, developing immune systems that handle city filth and "city food" better than almost any other mammal on earth.
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The geography of the infestation
If you look at the 311 data, the complaints aren't evenly distributed. Some neighborhoods are just... worse.
- The Upper West Side often sees high complaint volumes, partly because of the density of residential buildings and older infrastructure.
- Harlem has faced significant challenges, leading to the creation of specific "Rat Mitigation Zones" where the city pours in extra resources.
- Bushwick and Williamsburg saw a massive surge during the outdoor dining boom because of the sheer volume of nightlife waste.
It’s not just about wealth or poverty. It’s about density. Where there are people, there is trash. Where there is trash, there are big rats in New York City. The city’s subway system also acts as a subterranean highway, allowing rats to move between blocks without ever having to dodge a taxi or a pedestrian.
The carbon dioxide experiment
One of the more "humane" and effective tools the city has started using is dry ice.
It’s kind of clever. Instead of using anticoagulants (poisons) that can travel up the food chain and kill hawks or owls in Central Park, workers drop dry ice pellets into active rat burrows and seal the entrance. As the ice melts, it turns into carbon dioxide gas. The rats fall asleep and don't wake up. It’s efficient, it doesn't leave toxic chemicals in the soil, and it hits them where they live.
But even this has limits. Rats are smart. If they sense a threat to the burrow, they’ll dig a bolt hole in seconds. They are the ultimate escape artists.
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What you can actually do about it
Honestly, if you live in the city, you’re never going to be 100% rat-free. It’s just part of the tax of living here. But there are ways to make your immediate environment less of a target.
- Manage your waste like a pro. Don't just throw food scraps in the kitchen trash and leave it. Use a lidded compost bin if your building has one.
- Seal the gaps. A rat can squeeze through a hole the size of a quarter. If you see a crack in your baseboard or a gap around a pipe under your sink, fill it with steel wool and caulk. They can't chew through the steel.
- Stop feeding the birds. Look, I get it. You like the pigeons. But the seeds you drop on the ground are a five-star meal for a rat the moment the sun goes down.
- Report it. Use the 311 app. The city actually uses this data to decide where to send the extermination teams. If nobody complains, the Rat Tsar assumes that block is fine.
The reality is that big rats in New York City are a symptom of how we manage our space. We’ve spent a century treating the sidewalk like a trash can. We’re finally trying to change that. It’s going to take years, and we’ll probably never "win" the war, but we can definitely make it a lot harder for them to take over the neighborhood.
The next time you see a "pizza rat," remember: that rat isn't a freak of nature. It's just a New Yorker that found a really good deal on lunch. We just have to make sure the deals aren't so easy to find.
Take Action:
- Check your building's trash area; if it’s not using lidded containers, contact your management or 311.
- Support local "containerization" pilots in your neighborhood—losing two parking spots for a trash enclosure is worth a rat-free sidewalk.
- Audit your own apartment for entry points, specifically behind large appliances and under sinks.