Chicago is no longer America’s ‘rattiest city’

DENVER, CO (KDVR/NEXSTAR) — Big cities are populated by hundreds of thousands of people, but a larger, hidden population lurks in the shadows.

Depending on where you are in the country, there could be millions of rats just beneath your feet.

Pest control companies can’t pin down an exact number of rats in the world, but estimate there is about one to two rats per person.

There are roughly 8.2 billion people on Earth right now, which means with a one-to-one ratio, there would be 8.2 million rats. But that number can easily balloon to 16.4 billion with more generous estimates of two-to-one.

There’s an old saying that you are never more than six feet away from a rat, and that’s especially true if you live in some of the biggest cities in the country.

This is because rats love to live off the waste left by humans. So where you find a lot of humans, you’ll find a lot of rats.

Pest control company Orkin released its annual rankings for the “rattiest” cities in the United States.

To find this, Orkin tracks all of the rodent services requested by owner-occupied residences over the past year, which offers a snapshot of the cities with the highest levels of reported rodent activity.

Historically, Chicago has occupied the No.1 spot every year that Orkin has released its annual rankings, which it has been reporting for over a decade.

But this year, there is a new city being crowned the “rattiest” — Los Angeles.

Orkin cites that growing warm climates can help a rat’s survivability rate, so hotter cities are seeing themselves fly up the rankings, giving Los Angeles the slight edge over Chicago this year.

Chicago falls to No. 2 in the rankings, followed by New York and San Francisco.

Rounding out the top five is Hartford, CT, which wasn’t even listed in the top 10 in last year’s rankings

Here’s Orkin’s full list of the top 25 “rattiest” cities in the U.S.

Rank	City	Number of spots moved since 2024
1.	Los Angeles	+1
2.	Chicago	-1
3.	New York	0
4.	San Francisco	0
5.	Hartford	+8
6.	Washington, D.C.	-1
7.	Detroit	+1
8.	Philadelphia	-1
9.	Minneapolis	+2
10.	Denver	-4
11.	Cleveland	-1
12.	Baltimore	-3
13.	Boston	-1
14.	Indianapolis	+1
15.	Dallas	+7
16.	Milwaukee	+3
17.	Seattle	-3
18.	Atlanta	-2
19.	Sacramento	+1
20.	Pittsburgh	+1
21.	Columbus	-4
22.	Tampa	+13
23.	Houston	+2
24.	San Diego	-6
25.	Grand Rapids	+2

To view the full list and see if your city has a rat problem, visit Orkin’s website for the complete report.