[Lee Stewart]

Rats didn't actually spread the Black Death

Recent studies have discovered that rats may not actually be to blame for this devastating plague that wiped out a third of 14th century Europe. So it's time to rat out the real culprit. Scientists at the University of Oslo conducted an experiment that assessed the potential transmission routes for the deadly pandemic. They discovered that the parasites that carried the disease were much more likely to have come from humans than rats. The model showing the disease spread by human fleas and lice matched the death rates of the actual Black Death much more closely than the model involving parasite-carrying rats.