It was late 2015. September, specifically. Matt Little, a comedian, was walking down the steps of the First Avenue L train station in Manhattan when he saw it. A rodent. A slice. A struggle. He whipped out his phone and recorded fourteen seconds of footage that would basically define internet culture for the next decade. The new york rat with pizza—affectionately dubbed "Pizza Rat"—didn't just go viral. It became a mirror.
Everyone saw themselves in that rat.
Think about it. You’re small. The world is huge. You’ve found something great—a greasy, oversized slice of New York pepperoni—and you’re just trying to get it home. But the stairs are steep. Life is hard. We’ve all been that rat. The video hit YouTube and Instagram, and within hours, it was everywhere. It wasn't just a funny animal video; it was a gritty, urban symphony of ambition and failure.
The Physics of the Slice
Have you ever actually looked at the logistics of what occurred in that subway station? A standard New York slice weighs about four to five ounces. A common brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) weighs maybe twelve to sixteen ounces. That rat was dragging roughly 30% of its body weight down a flight of concrete stairs.
It’s impressive.
Honestly, the technique was what got people. The rat didn't just nibble. It committed. It gripped the crust with its teeth and backed down the stairs, step by step, feeling for the ledge with its hind legs. It’s the kind of spatial awareness you’d expect from a heavy machinery operator.
But then, the tragedy.
About halfway down, the rat senses Little and his friend filming. It freezes. It looks at the camera. In a moment of pure, cinematic defeat, it lets go of the slice and disappears into the shadows. The slice stays on the step. Cold. Lonely.
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Why We Can't Stop Talking About the New York Rat with Pizza
There is a specific reason this became a cultural touchstone while thousands of other animal videos rot in the digital basement. It’s the setting. The New York City subway is a place of shared misery and occasional, bizarre triumph. Seeing a new york rat with pizza in that specific environment felt like a mascot appearing for the city’s disenfranchised.
"It’s a metaphor for the New York experience," Little told various news outlets at the time. He wasn't wrong.
People started analyzing it like it was a Zapruder film. Was it staged? Some skeptics, including fans of the legendary performance artist Zardulu, wondered if this was a "trained" moment. Zardulu had previously claimed responsibility for "Selfie Rat," another viral moment involving a rodent and a smartphone. However, Little has always maintained the Pizza Rat encounter was 100% organic. It was just a guy, a phone, and a hungry animal.
The sheer scale of the reaction was wild.
- Halloween costumes were manufactured within weeks.
- Late-night hosts spent entire monologues on it.
- Scientific American actually published an article discussing rat behavior and urban ecology in relation to the video.
Most people don't realize that rats in New York have a highly specialized diet. They aren't just eating trash; they are eating our trash. A study by biologists at Fordham University, led by Jason Munshi-South, has looked into the "neighborhood-specific" diets of Manhattan rats. Rats in the West Village might have different genomic markers or health profiles than those in the Bronx based on what they're scavenging. Pizza Rat was just a high-carb representative of a much larger biological reality.
The Imitators and the Legacy
Success breeds imitators. In the years following 2015, we saw an explosion of "Something Rat" content.
- Donut Rat: Spotted in 2016, trying to haul a glazed donut.
- Hennessy Rat: A bold rodent seen dragging a miniature bottle of cognac.
- Eggroll Rat: A 2019 entry that felt a bit like a sequel nobody asked for.
- Bagel Rat: A classic NYC trope, though it lacked the visual drama of the pizza slice.
None of them hit the same way. There’s something about the triangular shape of a pizza slice that makes for better physical comedy. It acts like a sail. It’s awkward.
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But behind the meme, there’s a darker side to the new york rat with pizza narrative. New York City has a genuine rodent problem. In 2023, Mayor Eric Adams famously appointed the city’s first "Rat Czar," Kathleen Corradi. The city has spent millions on "rat mitigation zones" and new trash containerization rules. While we laugh at the video, the city is basically at war with the species.
The pizza rat is cute on a 5-inch screen. It’s less cute when it’s chewing through the wiring of your 2022 Honda Civic or nesting in the walls of a pre-war walk-up in Bushwick.
The Biology of Urban Scavenging
We need to talk about why that rat wanted the pizza in the first place. It isn't just taste. It's caloric density.
Urban rats are under immense pressure to find high-energy food sources without spending too much time in the open where they can be picked off by hawks (which are thriving in NYC, by the way) or stepped on by commuters. A single slice of New York pizza can pack 300 to 500 calories. For a rat, that’s a caloric goldmine. It’s the human equivalent of finding a butter-slathered steak the size of a mattress.
You’d drag it down the stairs, too.
Interestingly, researchers like Bobby Corrigan, a renowned rodentologist, often point out that rats are neo-phobic—they are generally afraid of new things. But they are also opportunistic. The "Pizza Rat" showed a level of boldness that suggests the rat had successfully scavenged human food many times before. It wasn't its first rodeo. It was a professional.
What Most People Get Wrong
The biggest misconception is that Pizza Rat was "gross."
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Okay, technically, yes, it’s a pest. But from an ethological perspective, it was a display of cleanliness and order. The rat wasn't eating the pizza in the middle of the platform. It was attempting to take the food back to a "safe zone" or a burrow. This is called "caching" or "hoarding" behavior. Rats are actually remarkably clean animals when they have the resources to be. They spend a significant portion of their day grooming.
The pizza wasn't the problem. The stairs were the problem.
Another myth: that the rat "won." If you watch the full video, the rat actually gives up. It leaves the pizza behind. In the cutthroat world of New York real estate and dining, the rat walked away hungry. That’s the real New York story. You work, you struggle, you drag your prize halfway home, and then a tourist with a camera scares you off and you end up with nothing.
Actionable Insights for the Urban Observer
If you find yourself in New York and want to understand the ecosystem that produced the new york rat with pizza, don't just look at the memes. Look at the infrastructure.
- Observe the "Rat Paths": Look for dark rub marks along the base of subway walls. These are "sebum" trails—body oils from rats that travel the same path every night.
- Timing is Everything: Rats are most active during the "Golden Hour" of trash—the time between when businesses put bags on the sidewalk and when the sanitation trucks arrive.
- Respect the Hustle: If you see a rodent dragging food, don't interfere. You're witnessing a biological imperative that has existed for thousands of years, just with more gluten involved.
- Support Trash Reform: The reason Pizza Rat exists is because New York has historically left its "buffet" out on the sidewalk in flimsy plastic bags. Using hard-sided bins changes the game entirely.
The new york rat with pizza is more than just a 2015 relic. It is a permanent part of the city's folklore, right up there with the Alligators in the Sewers or the secret tunnels under Grand Central. It represents the grit, the hunger, and the ultimate frustration of trying to make it in the greatest city on earth.
To truly understand the legacy of this moment, one must look at how the city has changed since then. We have better trash cans now. We have a Rat Czar. But as long as there is a $1.50 slice (okay, maybe $3.00 now) and a subway stairwell, there will be another rat waiting for its moment of glory.
Next time you’re in a station and you see a discarded crust, take a second. Acknowledge the struggle. The rat might have missed out that day, but it won the internet forever.
To see this phenomenon in action today, pay attention to the specific ways the New York Department of Sanitation (DSNY) is currently rolling out new "Smart Bins." These are designed specifically to prevent the exact scenario that made Matt Little famous. By cutting off the "pizza supply chain," the city is effectively trying to end the era of the viral scavenger. Whether the rats will adapt—perhaps by learning to operate the lids—remains the next great question for New York's urban naturalists.
Check the DSNY website for the current "Rat Mitigation Zone" maps if you want to see where the descendants of Pizza Rat are currently most active. You'll find that the struggle continues, one slice at a time, in the tunnels beneath the streets.