7) Chicago, America

When I think of Chicago I imagine a big dirty sprawling metropolis with crap everywhere and everyone smoking cigars. I’m fairly sure it’s not really like that, but they do get a butt load of rats to deal with.

The reason why Chicago gets on the list above other rat dense places is that they’ve got a pretty novel solution to their rat infestation. They’ve introduced coyotes into the urban landscape. That sounds like a bit of a risky thing to do, what with all the children and everything, but I guess they know best.

There’s more than 60, radio tagged coyotes just roaming free. They’re pretty quiet and chilled and apparently they’re helping keep the rat numbers down.

The coyote try to steer clear of humans as much as possible, but there was one report of a coyote going into a local restaurant and just sitting down in the chilled section, possibly because it was too hot. It just sat down, looked about and eventually moved on.

So whether you love them or hate them, they’re hear to stay. They were on the earth long before us and I expect they’ll be here a lot longer than we manage. They’re perfectly adapted to pretty much every situation and one female can give birth to around 2000 mini-rats during her life so they aren’t looking like dying out any time soon.