… is that, as Caroline Winter reports, the Metropolitan Transit Authority is sponsoring a pilot program to sterilize female rats:
To do this, it is teaming up with Flagstaff (Ariz.)-based SenesTech, a company that invented ContraPest, a product that, when consumed orally by rats, accelerates egg loss and can cause infertility in days. (The company’s name comes from the world “senescence,” which means to age.)
The ultimate goal is to reduce the rat population to a low level, as exterminating it entirely would merely invite an influx of new rats.