Pizza Rat: New York City's infamous rodent, explained

Pizza Rat wildly captured the imagination of Twitter on Monday, thanks to comedian Matt Little (h/t Jordan Sargent). Like any other rat in the Big Apple, it is hungry for life. Unlike the rest of its rodent brethren, however, it was recorded carrying a large, single slice of pizza down the dirty cement steps of a New York subway station.

Pizza Rat does some heroic work, carrying a slice of pizza tenaciously down the steps. The slice is way bigger than the rat and likely weighs more too. But he (or she?) was quickly criticized for abandoning the slice as it approached the third-to-last step.

We don’t know why Monday’s Pizza Rat abandoned the slice, but Katla McGlynn caught another pizza rat earlier this year who appears to have finished the business that today’s pizza rat abandoned.

Maybe Monday’s rat grew tired of the pizza-razzi. Maybe it hated lugging that huge slice down those stairs? Pizza slices can weigh anywhere up to nearly a pound, depending on toppings; according to the American Fancy Rat & Mouse Association, that’s nearly as heavy as the average rat.