Rats off Black list

EVERY child learns at school the Black Death was spread by rats which carried infected fleas – but the textbooks may need to be changed.

A study suggests the rodents have been unfairly blamed for the plague which killed millions in medieval Europe and it may have been spread by lice and fleas carried by humans instead. Researchers created a mathematical model of the rates at which humans would have died if rats were the villains. The death rates in seven cities failed to fit this model.

“‘For seven out of nine medieval cities, the model that could best describe plague outbreaks was the one assuming human ectoparasites – fleas and body lice – were the main way in which it spread,” biologist Boris Schmid, of the University of Oslo, said.