For centuries, mankind has lived in harmony with the gerbil, welcoming it into our homes, allowing it run inside our smallest wheels, and encouraging it to raise our human children as it saw fit with little to no outside interference. Now, a new study has found that gerbils have been trying to kill us for 700 years.

Treachery.

According to a paper examining possible climate-related causes of the Black Death, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, weather conditions in Europe throughout the pandemic would not have supported a perpetual replenishing of the writhing, screaming ''rat reservoir" traditionally blamed for spreading the disease (through fleas).

Betrayal.

In Asia, however, wet springs followed by warm summers could have led to a series of gerbil population booms. As temperatures (and, therefore, gerbil populations) dropped, the rodents' fleas would have needed to find new hosts, such as the idiot humans who allowed gerbils to exist with wanton abandon on Earth. (The paper suggests the gerbils could have passed their fleas to camels, which could have passed them to humans on trade routes, who could have passed them to other humans in Europe's harbor cities.)

Being very rude.

Here's how one of the paper's authors, University of Oslo Professor Nils Christian Stenseth, summarized it to the BBC:

"We show that wherever there were good conditions for gerbils and fleas in central Asia, some years later the bacteria shows up in harbour cities in Europe and then spreads across the continent."

As the Washington Post points out, this is not the first time rats have been exonerated in the court of public opinion; last year researchers claimed to have uncovered evidence the plague was airborne.

In light of the study's preliminary findings, perhaps Europe's rats will at long last take their rightful place alongside the Colosseum, Madame Tussauds™ London, and Viking river cruises, as one of the Continent's premier cultural attractions.

If you own a gerbil, go up to it now and whisper to it:

"You are evil. You are bad."

[BBC // Washington Post // New Scientist // Image via Shutterstock]