Alternative Imgur version
Today used as blood thinner, Warfarin’s first commercial use was rat poison.
Yes, this may seem scary, but it actually makes sense. The blood thinner makes a rats blood so thin that it kind of just seeps out of their veins without any damage, causing delayed and heavy internal bleeding leading to death, but a human with 100 times the body mass is completely fine.
This may seem cruel, but it is kind of necessarybecause rats are too smart for other methods or poison: if a rat notices another rat dying shortly after eating from a food source, it cab make the connection that the food is bad and will no longer eat from it, so you need something with a lot of delay to ensure all the rats have eaten the poisoned bait before the first one dies.
I don’t agree that ‘rat poison is necessary’. That would mean by extension that it’s necessary to kill all the owls and birds that feed on poisoned rats - a real and current problem due to overuse of rat poison.
There are other effective means of rat control - poisoning is just the cheapest and easiest.
It’s not a dumb take, it just doesn’t take into account the repercussions of killing the rats in that manner.
It’s why regulations are important, the “best” way to do something is probably not the BEST way to do something.
The dose makes the poison.