A new study claims that rats were not the culprits in spreading the Black Plague throughout 14th century Europe. The reputation of rats everywhere has long been sullied by belief that they were the culprits in spreading the plague throughout 14th century Europe, but a new study may clear them. University professor Chris Duncan and social historian Sue Scott have produced a book, The Return of the Black Death, which claims that humans and not rats carried the deadly hemorrhagic plague virus, not bubonic as once believed. The pair studied parish records, diaries and wills to track the spread of the disease and its symptoms, and concluded that this form of the illness could not have been carried by rat fleas.

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