This is the story of a stowaway rat, who hopped on a transatlantic flight, caused mass panic, had its travel plans rudely interrupted by a one-way trip to a scientific facility, and is now teaching the world a whole lot about global disease transmission. Sit back, relax, and let us tell you a tale. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

In 2017, a rat boarded a flight from Miami to Berlin. We can speculate that the little guy had plans to avail itself of the onboard facilities, kick back with an inflight movie, and gorge itself on peanuts. Unfortunately, its vacation plans were interrupted by the hordes of frightened passengers demanding – understandably – to know why there was a rat on the plane .

Rather than a relaxing l

See Full Page