Study suggests gerbils, not rats, responsible for the Black Death

[Brian G Turner]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31588671

They compared tree-ring records from Europe with 7,711 historical plague outbreaks to see if the weather conditions would have been optimum for a rat-driven outbreak.

He said: "For this, you would need warm summers, with not too much precipitation. Dry but not too dry.

"And we have looked at the broad spectrum of climatic indices, and there is no relationship between the appearance of plague and the weather."

Instead, the team believes that specific weather conditions in Asia may have caused another plague-carrying rodent - the giant gerbil - to thrive.

And this then later led to epidemics in Europe.

"We show that wherever there were good conditions for gerbils and fleas in central Asia, some years later the bacteria shows up in harbour cities in Europe and then spreads across the continent," Prof Stenseth said.

 

[Lacedaemonian]

Look there's a rat!
It's actually a giant gerbil.
What's a giant gerbil?
A cute rat.
Oh. I have got a bad head again.
There's something going around.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I heard this on the Wireless this morning. It sounded unlikely.
How did gerbils get to Great Britain?

Rats famously have bred everywhere that a ship has landed. Ask any Islanders in Pacific, inc. N.Z.

 

[BAYLOR]

And to think so many people keep them as pets.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

Sounds to me like the Rodents of Unusual Size have struck again.

 

[Lacedaemonian]

Splinter is an Asian rat. Or is he? Maybe Shredder was the good guy after all.

 

[Dave]

The headline is confusing - or the journalists are confused (which is usually the case in anything involving science.) They aren't saying that black rats didn't bring fleas with plague into the British Isles and spread it here. That is clearly still the case. What they are saying is that those great pandemics were not due to a rise in the rat population in Europe but due to a rise in the gerbil population of central Asia, and that that was due to an increase in agriculture in that area by man. They had thought they would find increased rat populations linked to warmer weather but that wasn't found. There was no link found to the climate or local weather.

 

[Mirannan]

The headline is confusing - or the journalists are confused (which is usually the case in anything involving science.) They aren't saying that black rats didn't bring fleas with plague into the British Isles and spread it here. That is clearly still the case. What they are saying is that those great pandemics were not due to a rise in the rat population in Europe but due to a rise in the gerbil population of central Asia, and that that was due to an increase in agriculture in that area by man. They had thought they would find increased rat populations linked to warmer weather but that wasn't found. There was no link found to the climate or local weather.

Yup. I followed it in some detail. The theory is that the gerbils increased in numbers in areas frequented by humans and their domestic animals - in this case mostly camels - and this raised the numbers of fleas, some of them plague carriers, carried by both the humans and their camels. Said area happens to be transited by the Silk Road, so the infected fleas got to the borders of Europe by that means and were subsequently transmitted to rats - which existed (and still do) just about everywhere.

This is a wonderful example of the reasons why ecology is so difficult to study.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

So much for the Radio summary ... Makes more sense now.

 

[anno]

Ecology: Biology + Maths = Headache

Not sure if the carrier matters it was the Fleas who spread the evil!

 

[Mouse]

I was just about to come here and say it was the fleas. It was the FLEAS! But anno's beat me to it.

 

[Dinosaur]

There is still the minor problem of the black death on Iceland which lacked rodent populations.

 

[Mirannan]

There is still the minor problem of the black death on Iceland which lacked rodent populations.

Perhaps not totally - at least the area around ports may have had a few. In any case, birds (including seabirds) carry fleas too.

 

[BAYLOR]

It had to have the been black rats with the fleas that they carried. If you combined that with a lack sanitation hygiene and ignorance of the causes of disease , you a recipe for disaster. It's not a surprise that half of europe perished in the black plague.

 

[Mirannan]

It had to have the been black rats with the fleas that they carried. If you combined that with a lack sanitation hygiene and ignorance of the causes of disease , you a recipe for disaster. It's not a surprise that half of europe perished in the black plague.

Or maybe the people on the ships going to Iceland. People carry fleas too - or can, anyway.