We have no one to blame but ourselves...

Hey, have you ever just wanted to immerse yourself in like a giant tub of rats like the ball-crawl at Chuck E. Cheese but with rats instead of balls? But you were afraid to because rats are sort of famous for being grimy four-legged disease vectors? And also people might think you're weird?

Just like this, but again, with thousands of rats.

Sure, the plague devastated Europe, but also
 inspired metal album covers. So it's not all bad.

Well, you can finally live your truth you rat-swimming freak, because it turns out that the popular conception of rats as a plague-carrying infestation to be eradicated might be unjustified. The rodents, and the fleas that live on them, have long been pointed to as responsibly for spreading the plague. Yes, the plague that wiped out tens of millions of people throughout Asia and Europe. But according to a new study led by Katherine R. Dean from the University of Norway, that might be a filthy lie. So who is to blame and how thoroughly should we enact our revenge?

"We may be filthy, ignorant slobs,
but we still have feelings..."

-Some Peasant

Get this: humans. Yes, according to Dean's new study, the infection patterns of the plague outbreaks between 1348 and 1813 more closely match that of human-spread pandemics. Well, flea-spread, we're still talking about a blood-borne disease so they at least aren't off the hook. But humans, particularly medieval Europeans, were filthy, ignorant slobs unaware of the concept of hygiene and who wallowed in their own filthy through much of the last two millennia, were lousy with lice and fleas, so it kind of makes sense.

"Steve, the rat, died April 4th, survived
by his wife, Ellen and 1,400 young."

You know, 'we have no one to blame but ourselves' should probably humanity's motto. Anyway, Dean's study, also goes a long way to explaining why records from plague-era Europe never seem to mention massive die-offs in the rat population. Of course at a time when paper was expensive and literacy was rarer than bathing, it's reasonable that rat-obituaries were not really high on the priority list of scribes but still, all the rats dropping dead at about the same time as a third of Europe would probably led someone-even medieval idiots- to connect the two.

Cool, right? Sure, if not super-applicable. Vindicating rats probably won't save us from the unkillable super-bugs we're breeding with the tiny bottles of hand sanitizers we walk around with like talismans against evil, but on the bright side it'll give the ape-scientists something to mull over as they piece together together the specifics of out self-destruction.

"Wai-wai-wait, lemme get this straight you had nuclear weapons, appalling wealth disparity,
and runaway climate change but it was Purel that finally got you? You fucking idiots..."

-Dr. Zira, rubbing it in