With a reputation for spreading disease and for damaging foodstuffs, the
Common Rat is regarded by most people as little more than a pest. Point out a
rat to the wrong person and not only will they utter the most disparaging of
responses, but they might even shudder and take a subconscious step backwards.
Of course, our problem with rats is just that; it is ‘our’ problem and of our
own making. We have cast the rat as villain because it interferes with (or is
perceived to interfere with) our way of life.
There is no doubt that rats do damage foodstuffs, such as grain stored
on agricultural premises, but if we are going to harvest and store food in this
way, then we should not be surprised when some other creature exploits the
opportunity being offered. Interestingly, the damage to foodstuffs comes
primarily from contamination (with faeces, urine and hair) rather than from
consumption, and rats do surprisingly little damage to the standing crop.
Control measures tend to be focussed on killing rats or deterring them, rather
than on the logical (though more expensive) option of properly excluding them
from where we store our food. Rats also spread disease, notably leptosprirosis,
but the risks to us are small relative to the other risks that we face in our
daily lives.
Much of our problem with rats comes down to perception. The Common Rat
is perceived as an invader, the aggressive Seventeenth Century colonist that
ousted our ‘native’ Black Rat (a smaller and more delicate creature), but the
Black Rat is itself a colonist (arriving with the Romans). It is also wrongly
assumed that the Common Rat arrived here from Norway, an error perpetuated
through its scientific name Rattus
norvegicus. In fact, the Common Rat did not reach Norway until nearly half
a century after it had first arrived here, most likely on a ship out of Russia.
Rats are perceived to be dirty, disease-ridden creatures, in part
because of their association with the underbelly of society. Rats do well in
urban areas; they establish colonies in our sewers, on the underground,
alongside our inner city rivers and around our refuse tips. But this says more
about us, about the rubbish and the waste that we create. The rats I see most
often are those that inhabit the banks of the river running through town. These
rats feed on the waste food dumped by passers-by, too lazy or ignorant to take
their waste home. We have become a disposable society and it is our excesses
that support the rats that we transported across the globe in our ships.
Perhaps their presence says more about us than it does about them.
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