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Potential of High-Intensity Ultrasonic Sound in Rat Control: A Reply

In a recent paper (Pinel, 1972), 1 pointed out that the technology was now available for building a device which could economically generate complex oscillating ultrasounds at extremely high intensities, in the range of 135 to 170 decibels, and that such an ultrasound generator might prove to be of value in the control of rats. There is little doubt that such sound is extremely aversive to the rat since it is lethal at close range and rats have been shown to flee sources of sound at intensities far below those being discussed here even when the frequency and patterning of the sound are not optimal. This proposal has recently been questioned in a paper by Motley and Abelson ( 1974). Most of their attack is directed at my supposed assumption that an ultrasonic sound source is aversive to rats solely because of its convulsive properties. They provide evidence from one of their own studies that this assumption is wrong and point out that even if the assumption were true, that the pressures of namral selection would lead to the development of populations resistant to audiogenic seizures. The rather obvious problem with this attempted critique is that the original argument was not based on this indefeasible, strawman assumption; there is certainly no reference to it in the original paper. High-intensity ultrasound has a number of extremely serious consequences for the rat including hyperthemia, tissue damage, deafness and eventually death; whether or not audiogenic seizures are elicited is a relevant but minor issue which was only mentioned briefly in my original article. The second point raised by Morley and Abelson is more interesting. They have managed to produce by selective breeding rats that do not escape from white noise presented at 110 decibels. These data are important because they show that rats can respond to selection pressures produced by an aversive sound source; however, they are not directly relevant to the issue at hand since the authors did not employ the frequencies, temporal patterns, or intensities recommended in my original paper. The entire purpose of the original article was to point out that ultrasonic frequencies which are at least 10" times more intense than those employed in the authors' work could have some application in rat control. It is difficult to imagine how selection pressures could produce rat populations resistant to the tissue destruction and the accompanying discomfort produced by such high intensities. If, as Morley and Abelson report, rat populations can develop an immunity to moderately intense sounds, the effective range of a high-intensity generator like that described in my original article may decline with successive generations, but i t is extremely unlikely that any rat could be totally immune to its effects. Moreover, such changes could easily be countered by using multiple sound sources or by mounting a single generator on a moving trolley.