Introduced to control the rats that had arrived with sailors, they had instead chosen to prey on the vast colonies of sea birds that roosted on the lava plains, wiping them out.
Similarly, the movements of the rats were tracked in their cage and used to control an avatar projected into the VR world the human subjects experienced via a head-mounted display.
In the United States, the carriers of hantavirus are deer mice, cotton rats, rice rats and white-footed mice, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.