NEW YORK, June 13 (Xinhua) -- The rat population in New York City hit a new high in four years, finds a new report.
Over the years from 2014 to 2017, there was an incremental increase in rodent complaints in the city, said the report released by the New York-based RentHop, a web platform that provides users with an apartment-search web facility.
A total of 19,152 rodent complaints, an increase of about 10 percent from 2016, were filed to the city's non-emergency call system 311, the report said.
In the first quarter of 2018, there were already 4,831 complaints made to the city about rodent sightings, it said.
Among the city's five boroughs, rodents seem to particularly favor Brooklyn and Manhattan, with the complaints of rodent sightings at 4,507 and 7,235, respectively, which are 104.35 and 197.50 rodents per square mile, the report said. Bedford-Stuyvesant, Harlem, and Upper West Side are the top three neighborhoods home to rats.
The New York City has long plagued with rats problems. A recent video of the Pizza Rat -- the singular rodent sighted dragging a slice of pepperoni pizza home on the subway -- went viral on social networks and the little creature has earned itself the honorary title of "a true New Yorker."
Mayor Bill de Blasio declared in 2017 an over 30 million plan to eradicate rodents.
