[ChuckMcM]

I find these stories intriguing. Several have come together over the last decade or so, this one, the bear hunt in Florida because of too many bears, the Burmese Pythons in the Everglades eating everything, mountain lions living in many parts of the Bay Area near people, the rat explosion in NYC.

All wildlife finding a niche in the urban and suburban world we've created and retaking territory originally ceded during an aggressive hunting and trapping phase of our existence.

Once we become the hunted what then? We have not yet seen these animals predating on the homeless but I expect it's only a matter of time.

[dalke]

The Burmese Pythons in the Everglades don't fit your pattern. The Everglades is neither urban nor suburban, the pythons live in areas that were never really settled by people, and of course the pythons are not native so are not 'retaking'.

And it's hard to say anything about NYC's rat problem as there are no good estimates of the rat population. The generally held belief has been one rat per person, but a statistician recently argued that there are only two million. Quoting further from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/06/nyregion/8-million-rats-in... :

> The health department says its efforts have paid off. “We have seen an overall decrease in the number of active rat signs throughout New York City,” Levi Fishman, the deputy press secretary for the department, said in an email.

> How much of a decrease? Mr. Fishman said that “there are no scientific methods for being able to accurately count the number of rats in New York or any large city.” Similarly, Kevin Ortiz, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is well steeped in the battle against rodents, said it had never quantified the rat population living in the subway system.

Instead, I suggest a possible bias to your information sources: everyone has cameras, and takes pictures of everything, so the number of rat-related videos has gone up.

You bring up 'the homeless'. As a reminder, many of those people living and killing animals in the 'aggressive hunting and trapping phase of our existence' did not do so from homes, so I don't think that's the relevant characteristic.

[ChuckMcM]

Your point about the rats is well taken. It does make for good click bait and over exposure serves multiple interests beyond simply informing the public.

I worry about the homeless as a vulnerable population who is disproportionately threatened by wildlife in an urban setting. Whether it is from plague carrying fleas on rats running around an encampment or a group of coywolves or a mountain lion deciding that this particular human sleeping under a bush in a park might be prey.

[dalke]

Sure. My comment is different. "Homeless" humans managed pretty well against lions, tigers, and bears. I think it's the defenseless you're concerned about. A house is one sort of defense. So is a car. So is a homeless encampment. So are guns and dogs. Few homeless are defenseless in the way you mean. While some people with homes are still defenseless against the threats you are worried about.

If you are concerned about plague, I think you should look more at domestic cats than homeless humans. Cats kill and eat infected rodents and pass the disease to humans. There have been 16 in the US because of that transmission mechanism. For that matter, there have bee 64 cases as a result of someone butchering or skinning an animal.

And while traditionally linked with poor sanitation leading to rat infestation, "plague in New Mexico has increasingly occurred in more affluent areas, a result of continued suburban and exurban development in enzootic plague foci." It's rich people who are helping to spread the plague these days, not the poor!

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/21/1/14-0564_article goes into more detail, and points to "performing common outdoor peridomestic work (e.g., cutting brush or chopping wood)" and "a result of contact with infected fleas that were brought into the home by indoor/outdoor pets" as the two largest vectors.

This isn't to say you shouldn't worry, only that more information might bring more focus into what you should worry about, and homelessness leading to plague should not be one of them.

(P.S. I'm an inveterate researcher. I tracked down these details in part because I enjoy it. I can totally understand how this style is outside the usual cocktail style discussion, which is all this topic really deserves, and don't expect or demand a comparable response.)

[ChuckMcM]

(P.S. I think its awesome, I love a person who explores the questions more deeply.)

I think you make an excellent point vis-a-vis homeless vs defenseless. My exposure to plague warnings has primarily been in the county and state parks around the Bay Area. The primary vector being fleas per https://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/vbds/Documents/PreventingVB...

We have also got a number of lion sightings/encounters although I could not find the 2014 or current data (http://www.dfg.ca.gov/wildlife/lion/trends.html)

And of course the linked article talking about Coywolves and relating to their lack of fear of humans.

My thesis is that human/wildlife encounters will increase as the populations of these various species increase in response to greater success in living in urban and suburban areas. And my conjecture is that as a result of increased encounters there will be more incidents where the defenseless are harmed. Have not yet thought of a good way to test that hypothesis yet.

And that has also lead to exposure to racoons and bears both of whom are willing to cross paths with humans in order to scavenge food or food scraps.

[robbrown451]

"Once we become the hunted what then?"

Then they will be wiped out like every other large animal in the history of the world that has significantly threatened humans. Next question?

[AnimalMuppet]

Maybe introduce some coyotes into NYC to cut down on the rat population?