Can rats coexist with people? Paris is seeking information.

Parisian city officials are attempting to determine this. Like many other major cities, the French capital has a well-known rat issue. In order to examine “cohabitation”—the degree to which people and rats may coexist—Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo is establishing a commission, one of her deputies announced during a municipal council meeting on Thursday.

In response to inquiries from Geoffroy Boulard, the head of Paris’ 17th arrondissement and a member of the center-right Republican party, Anne Souyris, the deputy mayor of Paris in charge of public health, made the announcement. Boulard had urged the local administration to develop a more comprehensive strategy to combat the overpopulation of rats in public areas.

He has repeatedly criticised Hidalgo, a socialist party member from the center-left, for not doing more to get rid of rats in Paris, particularly earlier this year amid strikes that caused waste to accumulate all over the city.

Rats on the surface are detrimental to Parisians’ quality of life, according to Boulard.

Boulard said that he came found the ongoing study Project Armageddon before posing his query. The project’s goal is to assist the city control its rat population, and one of its goals is to combat anti-rat prejudice to make it easier for Parisians to coexist with rats.

Although the city of Paris is a partner in the initiative, the study is funded by the French government.

What was being examined, according to Souyris, was the degree to which people and rats might coexist in an environment that was “the most efficient and at the same time ensure that it’s not unbearable for Parisians.”

Also read: 40 days after a fatal plane accident, four children, aged between 11 months and 13, were discovered alive in a bush.

Although rats may transmit disease, the deputy mayor clarified that the rats in question weren’t the same black rats that can spread the plague but rather different species that can transmit bacterial infections like leptospirosis. Thousands of new trash cans were purchased by the city as part of its 2017 anti-rat campaign, which Souyris said, in order to “make the rats go back underground.”

Later, Souyris claimed on Twitter that rats in Paris do not provide a “significant” risk to the public’s health. She continued by requesting input from the French High Council on Public Health.

She argued that rather than political news releases, we needed scientific counsel.