Encyclopedia of Life Blog

Today is the Chinese new year! Despite an intense cold-snap stranding millions, China celebrated The Year of The Rat with traditional fireworks and fanfare. We will celebrate by examining some of the wonders of a very controversial mammal who, according the an ancient Chinese tale, beat all the other animals in a race to be the first in the zodiac, it managed to especially irritate the cat by betraying its trust, accounting for their uneasy relationship to this day. People born in this year are expected to possess qualities associated with rats, including creativity, honesty, generosity, ambition, loyalty, a quick temper and wastefulness.

There are approximately 56 species of rat, the two that we are familiar with, many of us on a daily basis, are: the Norwegian Rat, Rattus norvegicus, found in both the sewers of our cities, and your local pet store, and the black rat, rattus rattus, also found in the sewers but preferring the warmer cities and generally kept out of pet stores.

Assuming everyone already knows a bit about rats, for example the fact that they live 2-3 years, are social, intelligent, and are important prey for many predators, as well as that they play an important role in scientific research, I would like to highlight some of the lesser known things about them. (For a more practical and informative bit of info on rats, check out what rat expert Robert M. Corrigan had to say in response to people’s questions about them in a recent blog session. Part I, Part II, Part III.)

One thing I learned today, is that rats are ticklish, and they laugh when you tickle them, check out this video of an odd scientist tickling a rat.

People have very intense positive and negative relationships with rats. For one, there was the bubonic plague, which was transmitted by them, like the cat incident, many people still have not forgiven the rat for its involvement in the plague. Some people, however are not bothered by rats per se, they even keep them as pets. Some of those people take it to the next level by showing their rats in rat shows, for a “Best in Show”-esque view of what that scene is like check out this 25 minute spot on Fancy Rats in Australia, it’s actually amazing and worth your time.

In India, there is a temple where people worship rats. They feed them and touch them and feel especially blessed if they can eat the food that the rats have touched:

Other human-rat affection can be found in the recent movie “Ratatouille”, which manages to tackle our greatest phobia of rats, by associating them positively with our food. Also, my personal favorite the character Master Splinter from teenage mutant ninja turtles. Here he is “making a funny”.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 7th, 2008 at 7:03 pm and is filed under Biodiversity Synthesis Group. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.