Rats in New York City are prevalent, as in many densely populated areas. For a long time, the exact number of rats in New York City was unknown, and a common urban legend was that there were up to four times as many rats as people. In 2014, however, scientists more accurately measured the entire city's population to be approximately only 25% of the number of humans; i.e., there were approximately 2 million rats to New York's 8.4 million people at the time of the study.