Don't malign rats for the Black Death - the gerbils were to blame

Who, me? Researchers say gerbils, not rats, may have been to blame for the Black Death in Europe. Photo / Thinkstock

The Black Death has always been bad publicity for rats, with the rodent widely blamed for killing millions of people across Europe by spreading the bubonic plague.

But it seems that the creature, in this case at least, has been unfairly maligned, as new research points the finger of blame at gerbils.

Researchers at the University of Oslo say they have found compelling evidence that the plague originated with the great gerbils - Rhombomys opimus - of Central Asia.

They carried the disease in fleas in their fur, they say, which then made their way to Europe through the Silk Road trading route.

The scientists switched the blame from rat to gerbil after comparing tree-ring records from Europe with 7711 historical plague outbreaks.

They wanted to see if the Medieval weather conditions at the time of the plague peaks would have been optimum for a rat-driven outbreak.

But they found that the ideal weather conditions came from Asia, rather than Europe - identifying a pattern which saw warm weather in Central Asia followed 15 years later by an outbreak of the plague in Europe.

The pattern continued for hundreds of years.

The fleas made their journey from Central Asia to Europe in a variety of ways.

Some arrived via foxes which had eaten the gerbils, which then passed the fleas on to rats. In other cases the fleas may have jumped on to camels.

- Independent