RI, MA EHS Pest Control Blog

Research Uncovers Empathy in Rats

As charges of greed and self-interest fly in these hyper-partisan political times, humans might do well to look to rats for lessons in kindness and caring.

A University of Chicago experiment to determine how much empathy rats have for each other had some surprising results, which were published Friday in the research journal Science.

In laboratory studies, a rat was restrained in a small cage that could be opened only from the outside. A second rat, seeing the predicament of the trapped rat, immediately began tirelessly trying to find a way to free his fellow rat.

Eventually, the second rat taught itself to open the cage door, freeing the restrained rat, leading to what strongly resembled a triumphal celebration between the two. Even when faced with an alternative choice of chocolate chips, the free rat would not be deterred from helping its caged fellow rat.

As simple as it sounds, the experiment is being hailed as a new paradigm that will help scientists trace the development of emotion in mammals back through the evolutionary tree.

Previously, scientists thought that empathy and pro-social behavior to help others were unique to humans, said Jeffrey Mogil, a researcher at McGill University in Canada who has done similar studies on mice.

“This study shows the roots of human empathy didn’t just appear but evolved,” said Mogil, who was not connected with the University of Chicago study. “It is very impressive, showing really robust and conclusive evidence that rats show pro-social (helping) behavior. You can argue why the rats are doing it, but you can’t argue anymore that the rats are doing it.”

The experiment is the work of University of Chicago doctoral student Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal; her adviser, Jean Decety, a professor of psychology and psychiatry who studies human empathy; and Peggy Mason, a neurobiology professor who studies pain modulation and relief.

Decety said it has been proved in past studies that rats also experience a primitive form of empathy called emotional contagion — the sort of thing where if one baby in a group of babies begins to cry, they all break out in tears.

“Ben-Ami came to my lab to do her Ph.D. with an idea of using an animal model to study higher forms of empathy,” said Decety, who enlisted Mason for a study that wound up taking three years.

The team first paired rats of the same gender for three weeks.

Then they placed one of the pair in a small, Plexiglas restraint cage, locked by a door that could only be opened from the outside. The cage was placed in a larger enclosure where the rat’s partner roamed free.

By means the researchers aren’t sure of, the caged rat seemed to communicate its distress to the freed rat, and the freed rat sprang into action.

“The free rat jumps on the restraining cage immediately, pushing it, biting at it, touching its nose and whiskers through the openings in the restraining cage with those of the trapped rat,” Mason said. “Clearly it wants to help out the trapped rat.”

After about six days, the free rat would accidentally open the door and from then on quickly learned how to deliberately open it, and then excitedly interact with its now-free partner as they raced around the enclosure.

“I can’t say that they are celebrating,” said Mason. “But sure looks like a celebration.”

Because rats love chocolate, in some experiments the scientists placed two restraint cages in an enclosure with a rat that already knew how to open the cage door. One cage contained a rat, the other five chocolate chips.

“We wanted to ask how much the free rat valued being able to liberate the caged rat,” Mason said. “They like their chocolate chips, but the free rat would open both cages in no particular order.

“The free (rat) could have done all manner of things to monopolize the chocolate chips, but on average it always left one and a half chocolate chips for the liberated rat. That’s impressive — a hard thing for primates to do — showing it puts equal value on chocolate and freeing its partner.”

Eventually rats that did not know each other were used, and the free rat still worked hard to liberate the stranger from the cage.

George Williams,
General Manager - Staff Entomologist

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA 

2012 is Slated to Be the Worst Tick Year in History

In Central Park, more than 1,000 trees in the red oak family were spangling the scenery with the colors of autumn.

But this year, they were failing to do something else they generally do in the harvest season: produce acorns.

“I remember going into areas and you’d get the crunch of acorns under your feet,” said Neil Calvanese, vice president for operations at the Central Park Conservancy. “And this year, you kind of have to search around for them.”

It is a phenomenon happening not only in New York but also throughout the Northeast. While last fall set a recorded high for acorn production, at roughly 250 pounds per tree, this year is seeing a recorded low, with a typical tree shedding less than half a pound of its seeds, said Mark Ashton, a forest ecologist at Yale University. On average, oaks produce about 25 to 30 pounds of acorns a year.

“Scarlet oak, black oak, true red oak,” Dr. Ashton said. “These are the ones that dominate our forest, and these are the ones that aren’t producing acorns this year.”

Coming on the heels of an acorn glut, the dearth this year will probably have a cascade of effects on the forest ecosystem, culling the populations of squirrels, field mice and ground-nesting birds. And because the now-overgrown field mouse population will crash, legions of ticks — some infected with Lyme disease — will be aggressively pursuing new hosts, like humans.

“We expect 2012 to be the worst year for Lyme disease risk ever,” said Richard S. Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y. “We are already planning educational materials.”

It will probably turn into a big year for animals’ being killed on highways as well. Deer, in search of alternative sources of food, will leave the cover of the oak trees and wander out closer to roads.

“I would expect that traffic collisions are going to be higher in a year like this year,” Dr. Ostfeld said.

While scientists do not fully understand why this year has produced the lowest acorn crop in 20 years of monitoring, there is nothing unusual about large fluctuations in the annual number of acorns. Fingers are not being pointed at global warming.

Oak trees “produce huge, abundant amounts one year and not in other years,” Dr. Ashton said. “I don’t think it’s bad — the whole system fluctuates like this.”

One theory for why oak trees vary their acorn yield is the so-called predator satiation hypothesis. Under this theory, during bumper years, the trees litter the forest floor with seeds so completely that squirrels, jays, deer and bears cannot possibly eat them all. Then, in off years, the trees ramp down production to keep the predator populations from growing too large to be satiated.

But the variability of weather in New York and New England could also be playing a role in the shortage this year.

“A lot of it has to do with the initial spring,” Dr. Ashton said. Acorn production is high when “everything converges on a perfect spring.”

It takes a red oak 18 months to grow an acorn. The tree is pollinated in the spring of one year, and its acorns drop in the fall of the next year. The rainy spring of 2010 could have dampened the wind-driven transfer of pollen from one tree to another, resulting in the acorn dearth this year.

While acorn fluctuation is normal, what is unusual this year is the abundance followed by the steep drop. “In a sense, it’s just another trough,” Dr. Ostfeld said. “But this is the most extreme pair of years that we’ve seen.”

Dr. Ostfeld describes acorns as an engine that drives the forest ecosystem. “When that engine is cooking along,” he said, “you get these heavy knock-on effects.”

The population of field mice, for instance, exploded this summer. While that was good for the mice, it was bad news for low-nesting birds like the wood thrush, whose nests are susceptible to rodent predation. In addition, the large numbers of mice caused an increase in the tick population.

On the other hand, Dr. Ostfeld said, “when you get a failure of the engine, things just change radically.”

Now the field mouse population is expected to crash — about 90 percent have died off in similar glut-dearth acorn sequences in the past. And the outlook is not good for the low-nesting birds, which face an increased threat from hawks and owls.

“The adult wood thrush will take it on the beak by the one-two punch,” Dr. Ostfeld said.

But in the middle of New York City, Central Park will be buffered from the ecosystem effects of the acorn engine.

“It’s a very managed environment,” said Arthur Elmes, the tree data coordinator for the Central Park Conservancy. “It’s nothing that won’t be corrected in years to come.”

Source = nytimes.com

George Williams,
General Manager - Staff Entomologist

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA

We never stop training our team and this shows when you speak to us on the phone or meet one of our service specialists in the field. Here you see some of our team going through hand-held computer training. By 2012 all EHS service specialists will be 100% using this cutting edge technology.

They will also be equipped with blue tooth wireless printers so they can print your service report from their phone while right in front of you. This advancement will reduce our paper consumption by 40% !!! This is EHS’s commitment to being a steward of the environment and it’s just another way for EHS to better serve you, our valued customer.

Susan Paradice
Office Manager

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA

click image to enlarge

I wanted to show you a “birds eye view” of what a professional netting job looks like when it is done by EHS. You can’t even tell this was netted off to exclude pigeons, sparrows, and starlings. This parking garage for a government office was infested with pest birds.

They spent thousands of thousands of dollars on products that failed to solve the problem. They spent MUCH MUCH more on the labor to power wash and clean all the droppings! This of course was a big safety issue for employees.

They called EHS and despite them doubting this would ever be solved we proved to them that it could be done expertly! Just more proof that when you have pest birds you need to call the leader in urban bird control, EHS!

Justin McDavid
Wildlife Control Supervisor

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA

Small Colony of Bats Triggers Preschool Evacuation

Colin Ross couldn’t tell if the animal was real. It looked like a toy he had seen before. So he touched it, and it squeaked.

Then the 5-year-old boy walked to the front of the classroom to get his teacher’s attention. “I think I have a problem,” Colin said. “The rat bit me.”

Next came a phone call to the front office of the Children’s Garden Preschool in Shiremanstown, where at 10:30 that same morning a bat was found in the hallway. It wasn’t moving, but it was very much alive.

Two bats found in less than one hour on June 22. That triggered the preschool employees and more than 100 students to evacuate the building and call wildlife experts to remove a small colony of bats nesting in the attic.

“I just chalked the first bat up to being a freak thing,” said Crissy Switzer, the day care’s assistant director. “But then a teacher found another one.”

It was just after 11:15 a.m. when Colin’s teacher notified Switzer that she had found a bat in her classroom and that it might have bit Colin on the pinky finger. Switzer immediately had the children in the classroom moved to the Bible Baptist Church, one block away.

She didn’t waste any time and called Colin’s parents.

“Your son was bit by a bat,” she said.

There weren’t any doubts about that.

It took Heather Ross a few seconds to register what had happened: that her son had been bitten by a wild animal, that it triggered the evacuation of the classroom.

Calls from school usually mean sudden sickness, a fight or fall on the playground.

“When people hear the word ‘bat,’ they’re thinking baseball bat,” Heather said, “Not the animal bat.”

Heather raced to the school, where she found Colin eating lunch, his pinky finger already cleaned and bandaged by school staff. “There he was, happy as clam, none the wiser,” Heather said.

For Colin and his friends, it was an event, that rare and exciting moment that every so often transcends naptime, arts and crafts.

To his peers, the facts were clear: Colin had been bitten by a bat; therefore, he might turn into a vampire.

But while the children joked, Switzer made phone calls and gathered facts of her own. First to the Department of Health, who advised her to send Colin to the emergency room. “If you’re uninformed and you hear the word ‘bat,’ you’re automatically thinking that you’re going to need rabies shots,” said John Ross, Colin’s father.

But since the school had possession of the bat that bit Colin, the ER doctor said the bat should be tested for rabies before any shots were administered.

Switzer had called the Department of Agriculture, who advised her to take the bat to their labs for testing.

Doctors released Colin from the Harrisburg Hospital emergency room that afternoon with discharge papers citing “a possible bite.”

It would take time before the results came in.

MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM

It took a whole 15 minutes for Switzer to evacuate the almost 107 kids from the Children’s Garden to the Bible Baptist Church down the road. She didn’t have to do this, but it was her call.

“I continually asked if I needed to evacuate the premises, and everybody said no, no, no,” Switzer said. “But I decided to evacuate anyway.”

The school provided a blanket statement Thursday night to the parents, explaining about Colin’s bite and giving the option of keeping their kids home Friday.

Wildlife Conservation Officer Timothy Wenrich visited the Children’s Garden the next day and found two dead bats in the attic.

Based on the amount of feces covering the floors, Wenrich determined a small colony of big brown bats had taken the attic as its home.

Wenrich estimated there were 50 to 70 bats, about half as many as the average number of children attending the Children’s Garden daily. “This colony is pretty small,” Wenrich said. “The average for big brown bats is a couple hundred.”

The name “big brown bats” is deceiving because they only grow to the size of a mouse. It was no wonder why Colin mistook it for a rat.

When Switzer called the exterminator to have the bats removed, she met resistance. Since bats are in their mating season, the Pennsylvania Game Commission had to confirm that the species is not the endangered.

Exterminators are restricted by law from removing bats without a special permit. Wenrich was able to obtain one, allowing Switzer to hire an exterminator.

RELIEF

It was about the time Switzer hired an exterminator that Heather Ross could breathe again.

The Department of Agriculture had the results of rabies test on Colin’s bat. It was negative.

John and Heather Ross of Camp Hill said they couldn’t be happier. “Looking back, I don’t think there was anything that could’ve been done better,” John said of how the staff of the Children’s Garden handled the situation.

(via United Press)
Note: In Britain they call potato chips “crisps”

Retail giant Tesco has apologized to a customer who claimed she found newborn mice in a multi-pack of crisps.

Liz Wray said she was shocked to see half a dozen pink mice emerge from multi-packs of crisps at a new Tesco store in Aston, Birmingham.

The mother of one said she was also horrified the store was not shut down straight away, but was still open several hours later as pest control staff arrived.

Tesco apologized for the "upsetting" discovery and said it was confident the incident was isolated.

A spokesman said: "This was clearly an upsetting discovery for our customer, for which we are very sorry.

"Pest control experts have been in the store over the weekend checking it from top to bottom and we're confident this was an isolated incident.

"The cleanliness of our stores is a priority for all our staff."

Ms Wray told the Birmingham Mail she was with a work colleague when they made the discovery.

"Suddenly these tiny pink things appeared from the multi-packs and were lying in front of us," she told the paper.

"They were repulsive and made me feel revolting. There were half a dozen of them crawling out of different holes in the crisps and we couldn't believe our eyes."

George Williams,
General Manager - Staff Entomologist

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA

Congress Poised to Pass Ambitious Food-Safety Bill

The bill would give the FDA broad new powers to force recalls of tainted foods, regulate imported foods and ingredients, and conduct more frequent inspections of food-production facilities.

In a world where we get garlic from China, shellfish from Thailand and sugar cane from Mexico, Congress is poised to approve an ambitious food safety bill that would strengthen the nation's top regulator and impose new rules on domestic production and trading partners.

The legislation is aimed at preventing tainted food from entering the supply chain, sickening Americans and forcing massive recalls. It would give the Food and Drug Administration sweeping new powers to demand recalls and require importers to certify the safety of what they're bringing into this country.

By allowing regulators, for instance, to react more quickly to reports of illness, the legislation could limit or prevent recalls like those of spinach and peanuts in recent years, supporters said.

The House is expected to pass the measure Tuesday, sending it to President Obama for his signature.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime update. A lot has changed since 1938," when the current food regulatory regime was established, said Ami Gadhia, policy counsel for Consumers Union. "This will put FDA in a posture to prevent food-borne illness before it happens."

The overhaul also would be good for business because "it's going to provide a measure of security and certainty that there's a system in place and bad actors will be weeded out. It's going to save business costly recalls," Gadhia said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week said tainted food is responsible for 3,000 deaths and 48 million illnesses a year.

But even with sweeping new powers, federal regulators may be hard-pressed to overcome a challenge that has grown in recent years: Food safety rules have changed little over the last 70 years even as the U.S. food supply has evolved into a global network including foreign growers, producers and processors over whom the United States has little or no direct control.

Today, imported food accounts for about 15% of the nation's food supply by value, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Imports amounted to $76 billion through the first 10 months of this year, a 12% increase over last year and on track to be twice the $41 billion in 1998.

But about 80% of seafood and one-third of fruits and nuts today come from abroad. Foreign sources also account for significant shares of certain ingredients even though the finished product is turned out in the United States. Most cereals, for example, include supplemental vitamins that primarily come from China, which is the third-largest food importer into the U.S. behind Canada and Mexico.

Most of the high-profile recalls in recent years involved problems with domestic producers. But the increasing flow of food from overseas has vastly complicated the challenge of protecting the nation's food supply, and new power to regulate foreign foodstuffs and components of domestically produced products is a crucial part of the pending legislation.

"FDA is able to inspect only about 1% of the food imported into the U.S.," said Erik Olson, deputy director of the Pew Health Group. "Right now, we don't have a standard for meeting U.S. requirements.

"When this legislation is put in place, we'll have a framework to ensure that food that's imported into the U.S. meets U.S. standards and importers are held accountable," Olson said.

The bill would give the FDA, which is responsible for overseeing about 80% of the nation's food supply, the authority to require domestic food producers to draw up detailed plans to ensure the safety of their products.

Domestic companies also would have to make their records available more quickly to the FDA, and the agency would be directed to inspect production facilities more frequently — a process now so inadequate that many plants are not checked for years at a time.

Businesses that fail inspections or are involved in recalls could be assessed the costs of complying with regulations. Failure to maintain a safety plan could lead to a fine of up to $1,000 and/or one year in prison.

The FDA also would receive a long-sought club to wield against recalcitrant food producers: the power to order recalls itself rather than asking for industry cooperation.

One challenge: The legislation does not come with built-in funding and would require an appropriation of about $1.4 billion over the next five years.

Next year, the spending bill would have to be approved in a House controlled by Republicans, many of whom voted against the original measure. However, the incoming chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), voted in favor of the bill.

Amid growing consumer anxiety about food safety, the industry willingly accepted the new level of government involvement, although some noted that the new law is likely to come with higher costs to producers.

That may hurt smaller farmers in particular who would have to buy new equipment for tracking products and pay higher insurance costs, which are likely to be passed on to consumers.

Like the mammoth healthcare overhaul, the new food safety law would be slow to take full effect.

For smaller food producers, the bill has a lengthy phase-in period designed to minimize financial effect.

And it would take time for the FDA to draft implementing regulations and increase staffing for its expanded responsibilities.

Moreover, many large producers in sectors of the food business particularly hard hit by illness outbreaks — such as produce — said they already were using many of the protective systems that would be mandatory under the legislation.

Foreign producers, though, might feel changes most dramatically.

"Historically, FDA's never had much authority overseas. They had to wait until food got to the border," said Chris Waldrop, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America.

In addition to requiring certification from importers, the legislation would allow the FDA to evaluate food safety authorities in other countries to ensure that they're controlling risks.

It also would allow the agency to enter deals with foreign nations to inspect overseas food facilities and to refuse entry of foods from facilities or countries that won't allow the inspections.

The FDA would be authorized to open new offices overseas. It currently has offices in China, India, Mexico, Costa Rica, Chile, Britain and Belgium.

"They will be able to get better knowledge of who's producing clean food and who's producing suspect food," said Craig Harris, a food safety expert at Michigan State University.

SOURCE: LA TIMES

Pest Control, MA ,  Pest Control, RI

Click on Image to Enlarge

We are experts at inspecting & finding things that people would ordinarily ignore or miss. That is the nature of what we do. In this particular case just about anyone would be able to see what is going on. Burrows in the snow are a pretty obvious sign of a pest issue. The burrows you are looking at are rat burrows. They are fresh & active as you can see the tracks & paw prints in the snow as well as the mud staining around the burrow entrance.

Rats can easily burrow through frozen soil & freezing cold snow with no problem at all. Rats are experts at adapting to the conditions in their environment. Typically rat burrows are well hidden because they do not want to be seen by predators but when it is winter they have no choice. It certainly makes exterior inspections easier for me!

Pest Control, MA ,  Pest Control, RI

Courtesy: Nancy Kennedy

Trees strung with hundreds of holiday lights at the Town Hall mall have been visited during the past several months by squirrels that chewed through the commercial grade wires.

This has resulted in a postponement of Braintree’s lighting ceremony planned for Dec. 5 at 4 p.m. with Mayor Joseph Sullivan and hundreds of residents in attendance.

The town has ordered several hundred additional strings of lights so they can be positioned on several of the tall oak trees in the mall in advance of the ceremony that has been rescheduled for Dec. 12 at 4 p.m.

When Department of Public Works Director Thomas Whalen electrified all of the lights on the trees this week, he discovered that more than half of the lights wouldn’t work. An inspection found that many of the wires had been severed.

“We’ve worked with our friends at Curry Hardware to find us some replacement tree lights, and a new shipment coming from North Carolina should be arriving in town for hanging early next week,” Whalen said. “In the meantime, we’ll strive to make the trees off limits to any squirrels before they can damage any more lights.”

Last year’s tree lighting ceremony was the first held at the mall in about 10 years, and Sullivan committed to restoring this event each December, Director of Recreation and Community Events William Hedlund recalled.

“We thought we were all set for Dec. 5, but the prolific number of squirrels eating away at the tree light wires caused this unexpected delay,” Hedlund said. “We are up to the challenge of having a bigger and better festive lighting program on Dec. 12 instead.”

Everyone is encouraged to attend, enjoy hot chocolate, and get seasonal candy canes while music is piped throughout the mall before the ceremony that will illuminate the trees on the south end of the facility all night long throughout the holiday season.

“We never anticipated that hundreds of visiting squirrels who have romped about the mall over the past several months would use their voracious appetites on the electrical wires hanging overhead, but now we can learn from our recent discovery and do our best to prevent this from ever happening again,” Sullivan said. “We refuse to allow this temporary setback to dampen our spirit as a community.”

I never approve of people who try to “do it themselves” when it comes to controlling pests. Too often the pest problem gets worse with other serious consequences. However in this case I applaud the customer for their ingenuity with solving a pest problem. I went to pick up some product at a vendor of ours when I realized the front door to the office lobby was blocked by cardboard. Upon closer examination I noticed some orange tape with the words “chipmunk guard” written on the cardboard. I stepped over the obstacle as it was not a human guard and compliment the receptionist on her invention. She laughed & said that the office gets hot and they like to have some fresh air so they open the lobby door. Unfortunately every time they open the door the chipmunks come running into the office & wreak havoc on the staff. She said that you would hear a scream or someone drop something and you knew that “Alvin” was in the building. So that is the story of how the unofficial “chipmunk guard” got started and to this day seems to be working.