It's Not Splinter: Big Rat Crawls Onto Sleeping Subway Passenger In New York

A sleeping subway commuter in New York was awakened by a giant rat crawling on his neck, as shown in an Instagram video.

The video taken on an early Sunday morning shows a lonesome passenger who was sleeping when a big rat suddenly crawled up his body and went to his neck. The incident was caught on video by Antony Lin, who uploaded the video on his Instagram account.

Lin, on the comments section of his post, said that the passenger was screaming while running to the next car.

Lin added that seeing a rat in the subway is nothing ordinary but this is the first time that he saw one inside the train.

"It's just insane and disgusting overall to see that. I've seen [rats] on the tracks and platform, but never inside the train," he shared.

A similar incident occurred in 2011 when a homeless man in a subway was awakened by a rat.

The incident raises anew the need for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to address sanitation issues in the subway.

"The MTA is constantly reminding riders to clean up after themselves, but they're setting a poor example by letting piles of trash on the tracks fester for months on end," Comptroller Scott M. Stringer said. "Our auditors observed rats scurrying over the tracks and onto subway platforms, and it's almost as if they were walking upright - waiting to take the train to their next meal."

Apart from the disgust with the incident, people are astonished at how "big" the rat was. Experts, on the other hand, say that the rat's size is not unusual.

In 2015, archaeologists were able to unearth fossils of an extinct rat species in East Timor. The fossils are about 10 times larger compared to modern-day rats, with the largest one being the size of a small dog and estimated to weigh about 5 kilograms, or around 11 pounds. The biggest known rodent, the Josephoartegasia monesi, was as big as a bull and weighed more than a ton (2,000 pounds).

Photo: Daniel R. Blume | Flickr