Here in America, it’s not only human beings who are suffering amid the COVID-19 pandemic – rats got it tough, too.

With millions of people across the country following shelter-in-place orders, many food-oriented businesses like restaurants and bars have shuttered their doors.

For hungry rodents looking for a quick meal, this is indeed terrible news, as the closures have largely cut off their main sources of food.

“A restaurant all of a sudden closes now, which has happened by the thousands in not just New York City but coast to coast and around the world,” Bobby Corrigan, an urban rodentologist, told NBC News.

“And those rats that were living by that restaurant, someplace nearby, and perhaps for decades having generations of rats that depended on that restaurant food, well, life is no longer working for them, and they only have a couple of choices.”

When pushed to the limit, these rats might resort to full-fledged wars and bloody fights to the death.

“It’s just like we’ve seen in the history of mankind, where people try to take over lands and they come in with militaries and armies and fight to the death, literally, for who’s going to conquer that land,” said Corrigan, who works as a consultant for several city health departments and businesses.

“And that’s what happens with rats. A new ‘army’ of rats come in, and whichever army has the strongest rats is going to conquer that area.”

On a grimmer note, and these rodents might even take the cannibalism or infanticide route.

“They’re mammals just like you and I, and so when you’re really, really hungry, you’re not going to act the same — you’re going to act very bad, usually,” Corrigan said. “So these rats are fighting with one another, now the adults are killing the young in the nest and cannibalizing the pups.”

Sights of hundreds or thousands of rats taking over deserted city streets have become more common and have even become viral videos.

To combat this, Washington, D.C., has already aggressively implemented pest-control measures, including the use of feral cats to keep the rat population in check. Other major cities like Baltimore and New Orleans are also pushing for measures to control their local rodent populations, which have been spread out into the open in search for food scraps.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek and Arirang TV.