Mutating mice becoming growing problem in Philly, researchers say

We begin here at 1030 with a growing and really disturbing problem in the city of Philadelphia. You see it right here, mice and rats that are now resistant to pesticides. Yeah, new research finds that the rodents have evolved, becoming resistant to the poison. Action News reporter Elizabeth Worthington, live for us now in Winfield Heights with the story and it's a little creepy crawly, Elizabeth. Yeah, great and sorry, this is the kind of thing that nobody wants to hear about. I was kind of shuddering while I was doing this story all day, but if you live in the city, you probably have several of these handy at all times and maybe even one of these fancy rodent bait stations that actually has rodent poison inside of it and maybe you've recently learned that a lot of these things aren't working so well. Remember learning about survival of the fittest and Charles Darwin in school? That's basically what's happening with rodents the last few decades. If the thought of mice and rats makes your skin crawl, then the phrase mutating mice probably sounds like something out of a horror movie. But researchers say it's a real growing problem right here in Philadelphia. They show a much higher mutation frequency than we thought before. So surprise, yes, it is. A recent Rutgers University study found that mice are genetically evolving to become resistant to the poisons designed to kill them, also called rodenticide. The researchers looked at samples from New York City, Washington, D.C., New Jersey and Philadelphia and surrounding suburbs. From those samples, we found that about 70 percent of the mice populations contain mutations. They studied rats, too. Don't worry, they're not mutating yet, but they are still evolving, learning how to outsmart extermination efforts. They're getting smarter by the day. Terrell Williams owns The Bug Bully, a pest control company serving Philadelphia and its suburbs. He says this became a big topic in the industry around five years ago. It used to work right away, but what's happening is it's starting to take longer for the application to work. That's what we've been noticing. Experts say as the rodents evolve, we need to evolve as well, decreasing our usage of while chemists work to create stronger formulas, something that can take a long time and a lot of money. They are smart, but we definitely have to become much more smarter than them. And this issue is not new. Rodents have been evolving for the last 40 years or so, ever since modern pesticides have been regularly used. But the research about it in the United States is new, and the researchers at Rutgers University would really like to continue it to learn more about this. We're live in Winfield Heights tonight, Elizabeth Worthington for Action News at 10 on PHL 17. Gray? Mutating mice. Sounds like a movie, but it's real. I don't like it. Okay. Elizabeth, thank you for the update.