This is an excerpt from The Narwhal This Week, a behind-the-scenes look at our reporting on the natural world in Canada. Subscribe to get it in your inbox.
Are rat kings real?
The question plagued Francesca Fionda’s mind this Halloween season. Even when they’re not tangled in a horrible mess of tails, teeth and fur — rats have a way of capturing our imaginations.
The rodent often elicits a fight-or-flight response from us humans, coupled with blood-curdling screams (feedback suggests mine are notably high-pitched … 🙄). But Francesca, by her own admission, is “a fan of creepy crawlers, and of little guys that maybe have some bad PR in the animal kingdom.”
So the senior B.C. reporter reached out to Chelsea Himsworth, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia, who started the Vancouver Rat Project to better understand rat ecology and the risk they pose to city-dwellers. She says climate change could boost rat numbers — but not because they prefer mild weather: “Rats really capitalize on chaos.”
Our “war on rats mentality,” as Himsworth calls it, drives battles like Alberta’s longstanding effort to eradicate them, but those are losing ones, according to her. And as with the war on drugs, she says, harm reduction is more realistic. That means dealing with the rats that are causing real suffering before worrying about the rest of them.
Read the interview to learn Himsworth’s favourite fun horrifying rat fact — and her answer to the question about rat kings.
Speaking of elusive and somewhat terrifying creatures … earlier this fall, northern Ontario reporter Leah Borts-Kuperman saw a flyer about a Bigfoot conference in North Bay, where she lives. Believers would spend Thanksgiving weekend sharing stories about the mystical beast — and she just had to go.
Many consider cryptozoology — the study of animals whose existence is unconfirmed or disputed — a pseudoscience. But to Leah’s surprise, there’s at least one reason mainstream researchers are taking Bigfoot seriously.
Turns out, there are far more citizen reports of Bigfoot sightings than there are scientific data for most North American mammals. One ecologist who uses machine learning to predict how species respond to a changing climate actually uses that crowdsourced Bigfoot data to train and improve computer models.
Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, has a centuries-long history rooted in Indigenous storytelling. And the interest around the creature gets people out into the wilderness. Being outside, experiencing something inexplicable and finally having a safe space to talk about it — at the North Bay gathering, it all made people emotional.
“I heard this theme over and over again, that one of the things people love or appreciate about Bigfoot is that it’s almost like a teacher of respect toward nature,” Leah told me. “It’s seen as a very elusive being that doesn’t want to be bothered by humans — and needs these vast swaths of forest to survive.”
Relatable.
Check out her story over here — and if you’re so inspired, go for a little fall hike. Beware, though: Kwakwaka’wakw lore says Sasquatch’s female companion, D’Sonoqua, is always watching.