Bubonic plague-carrying fleas found on New York City rats

IF the sight of a rat is enough to make your skin crawl, wait until you find out the rodents carry fleas responsible for spreading the bubonic plague.

Rat City

BEADY eyes, shifty teeth, inordinately strong jaw muscles and the ability to tread water for three days are just some of the characteristics of rats.

But if that isn’t enough to make most of us fear the vermin, a new finding from researchers Cornell University should do the trick.

The team collected 133 rats from five locations across New York City.

After combing through the rats’ fur, it was discovered they carried 6,500 parasites including the spiny rat mite and the tropical rat mite.

However, the most troubling parasite was the oriental rat flea, which is responsible for spreading the bubonic plague across Europe in the 1300s.

It is estimated the plague killed between 25 million and 50 million people during this period.

Lead author and Cornell entomologist Matthew Frye said there was no need for panic as researchers found no evidence of plague bacteria in the fleas.

“If these rats carry fleas that could transmit the plague to people, then the pathogen itself is the only piece missing from the transmission cycle,” he said.

In saying this, Frye reminds people to remain cautious because some of the rats were found to carry Bartonella — a bacterium that causes fever and flu-like symptoms.

He said because fleas regurgitate the rats’ bacteria when they bite human hosts, it was possible to catch the disease.

New York’s Health Department reiterated there was no cause for concern.

“Plague requires extreme circumstances besides fleas to pose a threat to human health, and those circumstances do not exist here,” the department said in a statement to NY Daily News.

The study was he published Monday in the Journal of Medical Entomology.