Cats & rats go together like, well, soup and salad (rats playing the role of both courses :-). Cats have been prized as rat-catchers on farms for many centuries. And, it is widely believed that the persecution of cats that began in the Dark Ages allowed the rat population in Europe to grow uncontrolled and led to the Bubonic Plague, which killed 25,000,000 Europeans in just three years.
So, how effective are cats at reducing rat populations in urban envrionments? Scientists from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Florida recently studied this question, coming to some surprising conclusions.
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