The Rat Fan Club
Book Reviews:
Non-Fiction
by Debbie
“The Rat Lady”
Book Review: Two
Pet Rats
This
small book written by Cicely Rude is a story of the author’s two rats, which
includes some information about keeping rats as pets. Most of the information in its 28 pages
is accurate, although it implies that the scientific name of the domestic rat
is Rattus domesticus,
when it is actually Rattus novegicus, or
possibly Rattus norvegicus domesticus. The design of the book is nice with cute
photos, and the rats are particularly attractive. A few of the beginning pages,
where she talks about their cage, bedding and food, are a little slow, but the
stories of the rats’ antics are especially enjoyable and written with humor. This book would be a nice addition to
any rat lover’s library.
Book Review: Rat: How the World’s Most Notorious Rodent Clawed its Way to the Top
This book was written by Jerry Langdon and published in 2006 by St. Martin Press. The cover design is interesting as the words of the title create the shape of a rat’s body, with the word “RAT” forming most of the head. The nose, ear, feet and tail are added. Once you get into the text of the book it’s obvious that the purpose of the book is to create or maintain the dread some people have of rats. At the beginning of every chapter there is a drawing of a rat snap trap.
The first chapter is titled An
Eating and Reproducing Machine. The book starts out with story of a big guy
cleaning out the garage of his new home.
When a wild rat falls on his head and poops in the hood of his jacket
the guy totally freaks. He ends up
throwing away the $300 jacket and has nightmares about the incident. The author then compares rats to lions.
Huh? Scattered throughout the book
are samples of statements taken from an online petition to stop the proposed
ban of pet rats by the Canadian
On page 16 the author makes the
brilliant statement that the small rats in palm trees in
A chart on page17 titled
Developmental Milestones has several errors. It says rats have a complete fur coat at
9 days. That depends on your
definition of “complete.” By 9 days a baby rat will have most of
his body covered by only a very short baby coat. It says the eyes open at 12-14 days, but
they almost always open at exactly 14 days. It says they are weaned at 20-21 days,
but that only occurs in laboratories.
A pet rat shouldn’t be weaned until at least 4 weeks of age, and a
wild rat wouldn’t wean her babies until at least 4-5 weeks. It says they will venture above ground
at 22-30 days, which means they are referring to wild
The author makes the statement that a 3-yr-old rat could have 43 litters in her lifetime. This is absolutely not true because a female rat will stop reproducing at about 1 ½ years of age. So even if she were to get pregnant at 5 weeks of age, which some domestic rats can do, then have one litter a month for her reproductive life, that would only be about 18 litters.
On page 21 he says rats lack
rotation joints in their back legs and therefore can’t descend trees as
quickly as squirrels. I have
personally seen rats rotate their legs like squirrels to climb down, and
certainly roof rats climb trees as easily as squirrels. Then he repeats the common myth that any
rat can squeeze through a hole the size of a quarter,
or only ¾ inch across. This
is absolutely false. An adult rat can
only squeeze through a hole it can fit his head through, and then only if he is
quite thin. Most
The author goes on to repeat just about every myth I’ve ever read in any book about rats. Such as they “can easily chew through copper and concrete,” and a “membrane slides down between the incisors to prevent the rats from swallowing any debris.” The rat does have folds in the cheeks that help block debris from entering the mouth when gnawing, but not a “sliding membrane.” And yes, rats can chew through soft metals and concrete, but not easily, only with a lot of work and waiting for their worn teeth to grow back in between.
On page 25 he states that rat-bite fever is caused by a virus, when it is actually caused by a bacterium. Plus he says that rat-bite fever if fatal in 13% of cases despite antibiotic treatment. I have no idea where he got this figure, but I don’t believe it. Rat-bite fever is not a reportable disease, and the Center for Disease Control does not keep records on it. Most cases of rat-bite fever are fairly benign, and there is no way that 13% of people treated for it die. In fact, on page 72 of the book he includes a chart that says the fatality rate of rat-bite fever is 7-10%. Hmm, which is it? Probably neither.
He goes on to claim that rats have killed hundreds of millions of people, referring to the plague, and once again compares this to the number of people killed by lions. Huh? He then makes the statement that the plague was caused by a virus, when it was cased by bacteria. Apparently he really doesn’t know the difference.
When he makes statements like,
“They are in our forests,” and “They can be a cherished
family pet, a lifesaving laboratory animal, or a snack served on a
stick,” it is obvious that he is really confused about the difference
between various wild species of rats, and the difference between wild rats and
domesticated rats. Wild roof and
Chapter 2, The Prehistory of the Rat, follows the supposed evolution of the rat. On pages 44 and 45 he again confuses wild with domestic rats. He references experiments done by B.F. Skinner that showed rats were attracted to new objects in their environment, but these were done on domestic rats, not wild rats. On page 46 he repeats the common myth of a rat king, a group of wild rats who are knotted together by their tails and fed by their colony mates. This is just impossible. The tail of a rat is tapered. I cannot imagine any situation that would cause a group of rats to have their tails attached to each other.
On page 54 he says the population
of roof rats is limited “to just a few colonies in the palm trees above
Chapter 3 is called A Most Uneasy
Partnership, but starts out with a story about a
On page 73 he makes the ridiculous statement that a rat produces about 200 droppings a day and urinates more frequently. At the most a rat might produce 50 droppings a day, and will urinate maybe once an hour. He obviously got this info from one of his “rat experts.” The rest of the chapter is devoted to how rats eat food stores and cause damage.
In Chap 4, called Entertainer, Test Subject and Family Friend, the author continues with his incredible bias against rats. After holding a rat for the first time he said, “The collapsible rib cage gives them a springy almost gelatinous feel, nothing like a more rigidly built puppy or kitten.” Then he says that all of the more than 100 rat people he talked with were eccentric. On page 90 he says you can buy purebred rats from “ratteries (rat farms).” I bet he wouldn’t call a cattery a cat farm.
On page 91 there was a redeeming quote from me, my usual one that pet rats are as different from wild rats as dogs are from wolves. On page 92 he says male rats urinate pretty well everywhere leaving a particularly virulent scent. A little later he says rats “can be taught rudimentary behaviors like recognizing their names” but that it requires great patience. And that “rats can be sort of affectionate in that they will begin to enjoy coming into contact with their owners.” Anyone who knows what pet rats are like will know that rats learn quickly and are very affectionate.
On page 93 he points out that keeping rats as pets is relatively recent, and goes on to describe horrible things done to animals in history, including 4 pages on rat baiting. He finally gets back to the subject of pet rats on page 99 with an explanation of how Jack Black domesticated rats. On the next page the Rat Assistance & Teaching Society is mentioned as the source of the fact that about a half-million households in North America own rats, he than says, “many people are still against the idea, often because they believe that escaped pet rats may start infestations where none exist.” He goes on to discuss the possibilities of feral domestic rats, and includes a whole page about feral dogs.
On the next page he talks about lab rats for 2 pages, and then switches over to jokes about eating rats. Over the next 4 pages as he talks about people eating rats in different countries but he never mentions what species of rats are eaten. On page 110 he’s back to talking about killing rats for sport, this time in a modern setting. Wait, what was the name of this chapter again? Oh, I get it, his idea of entertainment is animal torture.
Chap 5 is called Vermin, Villain
and God’s Best Friend, so you can imagine what it’s about. The only point worth mentioning is where
he talks about the protest against the use of rats on the TV show Fear Factor, which The Rat Fan Club took
part in. Cool, but he misspelled my
last name Dumcommun, even though he had spelled it
correctly earlier in the book. Could it have been a Freudian slip? At the end
of the chapter he discusses how the rat appears in other cultures, including
the rat temple in
Chap 6, titled Destroyer of Worlds, talks about how rats have decimated animals on different islands around the world, and how scientists are trying to help some of the endangered species by killing the rats. He does explain that the rats traveled to the islands on human ships. When telling the story of a flightless duck that scientists were trying to rescue from a Campbell Island, New Zealand, he makes the bizarre statement that a duck “gave birth to a number of litters.” An interesting sidebar on page 143 lists the average length and weight of the brown rat, black rat, house mouse, opossum and feral cat for comparison.
Chap 7, titled Second Only to Us,
talks about wild rats in cities and the attempts to eliminate them. It includes instances of rats biting
humans. On page 157 he makes the
statement: “Although listed biologically as herbivores, rats are true
omnivores…” I’m not sure where he found that; I’ve
never seen rats listed as herbivores. On page 159 he mentions me again, saying:
“Although she’s a vegetarian herself, Rat Fan Club president Debbie
Ducommun found it impossible to make a meatless diet that would keep her rats
healthy.” A sidebar on this
page and the next list the different colors and varieties of rats recognized by
the National Fancy Rat Society in the
On page 164 he says a biologist told him that rats don’t lick up water with their tongues but instead scoop it up with the backs of their top incisors.” This bizarre and totally untrue statement also appears in the book Rats, Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan. I guess they must have both spoken with the same incompetent biologist. On page 168 he says, “While pet rats may live more than 7 years, a wild rat is lucky if it lives a year.” While this statement is true, it implies that pet rats live much longer than the average two to two-and-a-half years.
Page 169 had a very interesting
short article about the
Chap 8, titled Quagmire, focuses on an exterminator named Ben, and as you could guess, is pretty unpleasant. However, Ben does explain how cruel glue traps are, and says they don’t work well for rats. He also explains that animals trapped in a glue trap can be freed with mineral oil, but that its poisonous so it will probably kill them anyway. Too bad he didn’t say you can use vegetable oil.
The author then talks about live-traps, and on page181 makes another bizarre statement: “Many humane societies will accept trapped rats, but they can’t be adopted as pets and are likely to be euthanized.” I can’t believe that any humane society would take in a trapped wild rat, and of course it couldn’t be adopted out. He then talks about electronic traps, and then spends 8 pages talking about poisons.
On page 190 he includes a quote
from a
Chapter 9, titled Future Rat,
starts out with a story of a supposed giant rat, which turned out to be an
opossum. He then goes on to debunk
the idea of a giant Norway rat, and says the largest one he ever saw was
feeding in garbage cans outside a
This book has two big shortcomings: the numerous factual errors, and the continual negative bias and failure to properly separate wild rats from domestic rats. I do not recommend it for rat lovers.
Book Review: OH,
RATS! The story of rats and people
This
children’s book was written by Albert Marrin,
illustrated by C. B. Mordan and published by Dutton
Children’s Books in 2006. I
really liked the design, with the book printed in black, white and red, but I
didn’t like the fact that most of the rats in the
illustrations—even dark-colored wild rats—were given red eyes. Most of the rats in the illustrations were
done quite well, but the rat on the cover, while detailed in every other
respect, is missing claws.
Most
of the information in the book is interesting and presented well, but I found a
few problems. It says a rat can
squeeze through a pipe the width of a quarter. This is a common
“fact” that often appears about rats. The truth is that a small
baby rat could do this, but not an adult.
This book says a rat can perform this feat by collapsing its
skeleton. This just isn’t going
to happen.
It
also says it is no problem for a rat to chew through a sheet of iron a half
inch thick or a slab of concrete four inches thick. Uh, wait a minute. While it may be possible for a rat to
chew through these substances, it would definitely be a mighty labor of many many days, and not the easy task the book implies.
I
assume because the book is for children, the author simplifies some facts, and
in a few cases I feel he over simplifies it to the point of creating
misunderstandings or even errors.
For instance, he says rats can communicate with each other at a distance
of 40 to 50 feet using ultrasound (so far so good) but then goes on to say that
elephants make similar sounds that carry for miles. Elephants actually use infrasound (sound
too low for us to hear), not ultrasound, so I think the way the author said
this is very confusing.
Another
statement I found confusing said “Eventually the Norway rat pushed the
black rat out of the cities. Now it
lives mostly in rural areas—in the ground, houses, barns, and
silos.” I think this must be
a mistake.
He
said “tame” rats (he should have used the term
“domestic”) cost from $10 to $50—a $50 rat is one special
rat! He must have been talking about
lab rats. In a section about
different cultures around the world that eat rats, in most cases he was not
clear about which species of rats are eaten. As far as I know, no culture eats
There
are also some statements that are just false. After explaining that wild rats can
catch fish, he says rats love water.
He’s obviously not met any of my rats! He says that a rat is old after 9 months
of age, but this is actually the rat’s peak physical age, and I
don’t consider a rat to be middle aged until 1 ½ years. When talking about wild rats that are
immune to poisons, so-called “super-rats”, he said that these
super-rats reproduce twice as fast as ordinary rats. This is not true. “Super-rats” produce more
babies than rats killed by poison, obviously, but their reproductive rate is no
more than that of “normal” rats. In a sidebar that lists the most serious
diseases that rats can transmit to humans, he includes rat-bite fever. While it is true that someone infected
with rat-bite can die, the disease is rare, can be treated with antibiotics,
and very rarely causes death.
Finally,
he makes the ridiculous statement that rat breeding requires skill, and
explains how mycoplasma-free lab rats were first
created (delivered by C-section and hand raised) as if that is how all lab rats
are currently produced. All lab
rats are now myco-free and are produced in the usual
way.
All
together, there is about one error per each 5 pages in this book. Fortunately, my rat care book is listed
in the back under Some More Books to Read.
Book Review: Pleasurable
Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good
(This review appeared in the June 2004 issue of the Rat Report.)
This book written by Rat Fan
Club member Jonathan Balcombe, Ph.D. of
I
found this book extremely enjoyable and interesting. I heartily recommend it to anyone who is
interested in animal behavior.
Jonathan has done a great job of explaining the scientific evidence that
animals experience pleasure in a way that is easy to understand. The book also shows off Jonathan’s
sense of humor. For instance, in
Chapter 3, Feeling Smart, The Intelligence of Pleasure, he says,
“Ultimately, there can be no decisive proof of animal pleasure, any more
than there can be absolute proof that smoking causes lung cancer, or that bacon
is bad for you (it’s certainly bad for pigs.)”
Dr.
Jonathan Balcombe is an animal behavior Research
Scientist for the Washington, DC-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and
author of The Use of Animals in Higher Education: Problems,
Alternatives, and Recommendations.
In addition to published papers on the behavioral ecology of bats,
birds, and turtles, he has written many scholarly and lay articles on animal
use in education and research. A popular speaker, he has given invited
presentations in the
Of
course, Jonathan talks about rats in his book! In fact, rats are mentioned on more than
24 of the pages. Most of the
references are to the research that shows rats enjoy playing and wrestling, and
they laugh when they do so. But
other topics are presented too.
Jonathan describes the different personalities and activity preferences
of his 3 girl rats, and talks some about their food preferences. He also talks about the research that
shows rats dream. Also mentioned is
that rats do better in a maze after being exposed to music by Mozart rather
than modern music by Philip Glass, and that rats will restrain their behavior
if they see that it will cause harm to another rat. Cool!
Here are a few excerpts that
feature rats:
Rats
at Play: Rats mostly play when they
are young, but grown-up rats are also motivated to play. In a laboratory study,
both juvenile and adult male rats showed a significant preference for a box
containing a free moving rat compared to either a box with a rat confined
behind a Plexiglas barrier or a box with no rat. The confined rat was visible,
but not available to play with.
When
rats are anticipating opportunities to play, their brains release a
“pleasure chemical” called dopamine. Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp reports a close
link between such chemicals and play, and that rats enjoy being playfully
tickled. These findings complement ample behavioral evidence that play is
enjoyable. Studies at the
Rats
and Food: Rats will enter a deadly
cold room and navigate a maze to retrieve gourmet tidbits (e.g., shortbread,
meat paté, and CocaCola®).
If they happen to find their regular (and less tasty) commercial rat chow at
the end, they quickly return to their cozy nests, where they stay for the
remainder of the experiment. But if they find a tasty treat, they feed on it
before returning home, then return repeatedly for
more. This is a rodent version of shunning the fruit bowl and dashing out to
the convenience store on a rainy night to get some donuts.
Live
and Let Live: One of my favorite
anecdotes comes from naturalist-photographer Lewis Wayne Walker, who discovered
a wild rat running in a rodent exercise wheel he had stored in his barn. By
itself, it’s just an isolated, if compelling, observation. But
what’s to keep people from setting out running wheels (instead of traps)
in places where rats live and monitoring the results?
I do
have to warn you that the chapter on sex is quite explicit, so be prepared. The beginning of the chapter says:
“Warning: making the case for sexual pleasure in animals requires
venturing into territory that may be distasteful to some readers. If you may be one such, I suggest you
skip to the next chapter.”
The
publisher is Macmillan and the book sells for $24.95. For more on Jonathan and his book tour,
visit his website at www.pleasurablekingdom.com.
Book Review: Rats,
Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted
Inhabitants
(This review appeared in the June 2004 issue of the Rat Report.)
This
book, written by Robert Sullivan and published by
When
I first heard about the book, I was excited. I was looking forward to reading about
observations of wild rats in
If
you read the subtitle of the book—Observations on the History and Habitat
of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants—carefully, you will see
that the observations are not on the rats themselves, but on their history and
habitat. Out of 219 pages, only
about 20 are actually about rats.
The rest is about people and history. Sullivan says he spent a year of nights
observing wild rats in a NYC alley, but he only tells about his observations of
the rats in about 12 pages.
The
most interesting chapters are 2, 6, 8, 13 and 18. The cover art for the book is also
interesting. It shows a rat worked
into a map of NYC.
Chapter 2 (9 ½ pages) starts by describing wild
rats. I liked the first paragraph, especially
the last sentence which is “I offer a portrait that is hysteria-free,
that merely describes the rat as a rat.” He proceeds to spend about 3 pages
describing wild rats, both
But
the worst statement he makes is so bad, it’s almost funny. He describes watching rats drink water
from a dirty puddle in the subway, and says, “They sip the water the way
rats do, either with their front paws, or by scooping it up with their
incisors.” The chapter goes
on to describe the different ways wild rats can die (you don’t want to
know) and the history of how wild rats arrived in
Chapter
6 (10 pages) includes about 2 pages of description of Sullivan’s first
observations of the rats in the alley.
He is amazed to find that they bound and gallop, instead of scuttling. Most of this chapter is about a homeless
man Sullivan meets in the alley, Derrick, who shows Sullivan that he can
intimidate the rats in the alley by shouting and stomping on the ground. He claims he has the rats
“trained.” This makes a
big impression on Sullivan who is actually terrified of the rats.
Chapter
8 (6 ½ pages) is titled “Food” and talks about the types of
food wild rats tend to like the best.
Sullivan says it is written in the rat literature that a rat would
starve in an alley surrounded by raw vegetables. Of course, this can’t be
true. But it appears that wild rats
tend to like fast food best, and they apparently tend to prefer the type of
food that is common in their alley.
For instance, rats who live in an alley that
backs onto an Indian restaurant will tend to prefer spicy Indian food to other
ethnic styles. Sullivan includes a
list of food from a study done by Martin W. Schein in
1953. Schein
trapped wild rats in
Chapter
13 (6 pages) is called “Trapping,” and is about how Sullivan sets a
live-trap to try to catch a rat in the alley. He is unsuccessful. Chapter 17 (19 pages) is called
“Catching” and here Sullivan tells how he accompanied a team from
the city health department after 9/11 as they trapped rats to take blood
samples to monitor disease. One of
the team members, Ann Li, really liked the rats. At various times she said, “I
think rats are so underappreciated,” “Rats are the smartest
creatures,” and when they finally catch a rat, “This rat is
beautiful!” They trapped the
rats using live-traps, then anesthetized them with
halothane before drawing the blood.
They then allowed the rats to die under the anesthetic, although one
very strong rat overcame the anesthetic and escaped. The last 7 ½ pages of the chapter
are about cases of plague in NYC.
Chapter
18 (9 ½ pages) includes some of Sullivan’s observations of rats in
the alley over a few nights, and especially, notes on a rat who had a corkscrew
tail and was noticeably bigger than the other rats. This is the only rat that Sullivan saw
more than once, although he said he could not tell the other rats apart.
So
what is the rest of the book about?
Well, Chapter 1 (4 pages) explains why Sullivan decided to observe rats
and write this book. It’s
partly because he found a painting of wild rats done by Audubon, and partly
because Sullivan shares a liking for areas that rats also like: swamps, dumps,
and alleys.
Chapter
3 (12 pages) is about David E. Davis, whom Sullivan describes as “
Chapter
4 (6 ½ pages) is all about the history of the alley Sullivan chose: Edens Alley.
Chapter 5 (14 ½ pages) covers the history of wild rat
infestations in NYC and reports of wild rats in the newspaper. Chapter 7 (9 pages) is about Jesse Gray,
the founder of the first Harlem Tenants Council. Chapter 9 (9 ½ pages) is about
the history of “ratting” in NYC, where wild rats were caught and
put into arenas so dogs could kill them for entertainment.
Chapter
10 (10 ½ pages) is about the history of garbage in NYC. Chapter 11 (15 ½ pages) is about
exterminators, or pest control operators as they are called now, once they
realized they could only control pests and not completely exterminate
them. This chapter contains a quote
from one of the exterminators who said he had seen on TV a “country in
Chapter
12 (16 pages) is about Sullivan traveling to
I
can’t recommend this book for the average rat lover. I found parts of it interesting, but
other parts are boring, and some are quite grisly. I can only recommend it for someone who
isn’t too squeamish and who wants to read all they can about rats.
Book Review: Animals
and the Afterlife
(This review appeared in the Jan 2004 issue of the Rat Report.)
I was very happy to read this book, which
is well organized and well written.
It is filled with amazing stories of contacts between humans and not
only animals who have passed on, but also animals who
are still living. It is hard to
maintain skepticism about life after death, animal communication and the
intelligence and spirituality of animals in the face of so much evidence.
But
the best part of this book is the many stories Kim tells about her
relationships with her rats! The
book is a collection of stories from many different people, most about other
kinds of animals, but woven throughout are Kim’s own stories, most of
which are about rats. These stories
are an absolute joy to read, and I feel that every pet lover who reads this
book will have their eyes opened about rats. Whether Kim meant the book to be a
testimonial about rats or not (and most likely she did!) it paints a most
glowing picture of their nature.
Time after time as I read the book I found tears running down my
face. Thank you, Kim for a
wonderful book!
Book Review: The Story of Rats
(This review appeared in the
November 2002 issue of the Rat Report.)
This
book, The Story of Rats: Their Impact on
Us, and Our Impact on Them was written by S. Anthony Barnett and published
in
The
blurb about Barnett on the back cover of The
Story of Rats says, “Early in the Second World War, equipped only
with first class honours from
Barnett
explains in his preface that what he attempted in this book was a social
history of human relationships with rats.
The main failing of this book is that he absolutely ignored the fact
that rats are kept as pets! He didn’t
mention it anywhere in the book. I
found this to be totally inexplicable.
If his book is supposed to be about our impact on rats and their impact
on us, then it would make sense to cover this part of our relationship.
I
was also disappointed in the book as a whole because it seemed to me that
Barnett’s general attitude was not respectful or interested in the rats
themselves, but only what society could learn about humans by comparing us to
rats. Maybe this attitude can be
better understood when you see on page 119 that in Barnett’s world of
laboratory research, it was not usual for the rats to be socialized. He makes the comment that socialized
rats “can be highly disconcerting to visitors to one’s laboratory
who are accustomed only to normal
This
would also explain another statement he makes. He says at the end of Chapter 2 that
when some of his lab rats escaped into “the gloomy junk-filled cellars of
a large ill-designed building,” and were later captured and restored to
their cages “they were quite vicious.”
While
the book was meant to be historical, I was also disappointed that he did not
include more recent scientific discoveries about rats, such as the fact that
they laugh, and the brain research that shows rats think about what they want
(some were able to control a machine that gave them water by thought alone.)
Right
from the start you can see Barnett’s approach to rats. Chapter 1, titled “Tales of
Rats,” begins with curses people have used against rats and mice, and
includes subsections titled “Abominations and Horrors” and
“Magic, Sport and Nourishment,” which lists two cookbooks that
include recipes for rat. He does
point out that the horror scene featuring rats in the novel 1984 “has no connection with what
rats would actually do….”
In
Chapter 2, “Naming and Taming,” he says about the Norway rat,
“in its domestic forms it is usually white, or
white and black….”
While this is essentially true, it would have been nice for him to point
out that domestic rats are now bred in a wide variety of colors and patterns,
but as I said before, he makes absolutely no mention of pet or show rats
anywhere in the book.
I’m
sure you won’t be surprised that Barnett spends most of Chapter 3,
“All Fall Down,” on the plague. The strange thing is that in the 12
pages on this topic, rats are only mentioned once!
In
Chapter 5, “Do Rats Think?” we can see a bit more of
Barnett’s attitude towards rats.
He makes the statement, “Although children cannot be kept like
rats, in cramped and featureless cages….” It’s obviously okay with Barnett
that rats are kept in cramped and
featureless cages. Amazing that he
would believe anything could be learned about rat behavior in that situation.
I
found Chapter 6, “Are Rats Gluttons?” to be the most interesting of
the book. Barnett talks about the
individual eating habits and preferences of different rats and how they can
choose the right supplement when they are deficient in a nutrient. Other interesting topics are social
feeding and social learning.
However, I was surprised that he made no mention of genetic obesity.
In
Chapter 7, “All in their Genes,” there is an apparent mistake as
readers are referred to a previous chapter for an example that I couldn’t
find anywhere.
In
Chapter 8, “Rat Societies,” Barnett makes a strange statement. When talking about how rats chatter
their teeth when fighting he says, “Whether this is a social signal is
doubtful.” I think it’s
clear that tooth chattering is a social signal! He also makes no mention of how rats use
ultrasound. In this chapter he also
says that the domestic rats he studied were always peaceful and non-territorial
and never fought even when he introduced new rats. Now that’s strange!
In
Chapter 9, “Population Explosions,” Barnett makes another strange
statement. He says, “Despite
or because of their strange social interactions, rats have a fabulous capacity
to multiply….” Even
after reading the book I’m not sure why he feels rats have strange social
interactions!
While
I feel that this book is woefully incomplete and biased, it does include some
very interesting information about rats such as the differences between wild
and domestic rats, the interaction of learning with instinct, and how wild rats
avoid poisons and traps. However,
Barnett’s negative attitude towards rats is disturbing for someone who
loves them.
Book Review:
Animal Miracles
(This review appeared in the
December 2001 issue of the Rat Report.)
This
book, Animal Miracles: Inspirational and
Heroic True Stories, is a treasure.
I’ve been meaning to review it for a while, and other things kept
pushing it aside. There is only one
story about a rat in the book, and it is about a wild rat, not a pet rat, but
it is a good story. This wild rat
becomes friends with a miner. The
miner shares his food with the rat and the rat keeps the miner company. One day, the rat became very agitated
and ran up to the miner and then ran away several times. The miner finally realized the rat was
trying to tell him something and followed the rat. Immediately after that, the roof of the
mine where the miner was working collapsed. The rat had saved the miner’s
life!
The
book contains 50 amazing, touching, and truly miraculous stories of animals
helping humans. Most of the stories
feature dogs and cats, but there are also stories about birds, horses, pigs,
cows, dolphins, sea lions, a whale, a monkey, an elk, and even a sea turtle, a
stingray, and a shark. The stories
were collected by Brad Steiger and Sherry Hansen Steiger and published in 1999 by Adams Media
Corporation. This book would be a
wonderful addition to any animal lover’s library.
Book Review: The
Rat: A Perverse Miscellany
(This
review appeared in the February 1998 issue of the Rat Report.)
This
book, collected by Barbara Hodgson (1997, Ten Speed Press), has some
interesting bits, but it is almost all about wild rats and therefore heavily
oriented toward the negative side of rats.
The press release says it is “a compendium of rat facts, rat
fiction, rat lore, and rat art.”
I found very few rat facts in this book. It is basically a collection of quotes
from other books and periodicals, mostly focusing on the image of horror that
is perpetuated in the popular media.
The
book is divided into 11 chapters plus a preface, in which the author describes
some encounters with wild rats she has had during her international
travels. She met her first wild rat
in a hotel room in
But
while Hodgson found wild rats in
The
chapter Rat Talk goes on to discuss the various terms using rat, such as
rat-fink and rat race. One
interesting entry is the word raternity, which was
coined by Michel Dansel in his book Nos Freres les Rats
(Our Brothers the Rats). Raternity describes the relationship between rats which
allows them to communicate survival details such as the appearance of a new
poison. On page 4, there is a list
of “Other rats, real and otherwise:” including the “Muskrat”
and the “Pouched rat,” however Hodgson does not explain which are
real and which aren’t.
The
next chapter, Around the World, is a selection of writings from or about
different countries which mention rats.
The selection for Java says that to encourage the killing of rats, the
government required that people applying for marriage licenses had to supply 25
rat tails. Enterprising Javanese
began to manufacture artificial tails (impossible to tell from the real ones),
so the government began to require 25 rat bodies. The Javanese then began to breed
rats! The entry for
The
next chapter, The Essential Rat, supposedly supplies the “rat
facts,” but much of the information is wrong. For instance, one quote says about the
wild Norway rat: “They cannot vomit and so can eat almost anything. They are almost totally blind and
‘see’ with the hairs on the sides of their bodies.” Although it is true that rats
can’t vomit, this is not why they can eat almost anything! In fact, they must be very careful of
what they eat. And I don’t
know about your rats, but mine seem to be able to see just fine! Hodgson also perpetuates the tooth myth
by saying: “If they didn’t gnaw continually, their incisors would
grow 4″ a year and cause the animal great difficulties.” A drawing in another chapter of what is
supposed to be rat incisors from a U.S. Land Survey shows the “rat”
having 4 incisors on the top!
In
the next chapter, The Fabled Rat, Hodgson lists several familiar stories,
although in most versions, like the City Rat and Country Rat, the rats are
replaced by mice. She describes a
turn-of-the-century children’s book La
Guerre des rats et de grenouilles
(The War of the rats and frogs) which she calls delightful, but a picture of
rats stabbing frogs with knives and spears turned my stomach. I found one interesting entry in this
chapter which belongs in the previous chapter because it is true. In reference to cannibalism, Mr. Bewick, an illustrator from Great Britain, said, “the
skins of such of them as have been devoured in their holes have frequently been
found curiously turned inside out, every part of them being completely inverted,
even to the ends of the toes.”
Although the author who quoted Mr. Bewick
didn’t quite believe his statement, calling it alleged, I actually saw
this in the lab. In several cases
where rats had been eaten by their cagemates (after dying of natural causes), the skins were almost always turned inside out, although I
never noticed the toes.
The
next chapter, The Fictional Rat, offers a few more negative quotes, although
Hodgson does mention Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, and two other books, Racso and the Rats of NIMH and R-T; Margaret, and the Rats of NIMH,
written by the original author’s daughter, which I didn’t know
about. The next 5 chapters, Gothic
Rats and Other Terrors, The Cinematic Rat, The Four Deadly Sins, Plagues and
Cures, and To Catch a Rat, are pretty much what you might expect. In The Cinematic Rat Hodgson includes
several short synopses of movies in which rats appear, but some of them
don’t give you enough information to let you know exactly how the rats
appear, and whether or not it would be worth watching the movie. The chapter To Catch a Rat is especially
disgusting.
The
final chapter, Rats and Man, includes several interesting bits, including a
photo of a suit of armor for a rat and a quote from a book called The Rat
Report! (apparently “written” by a lab
rat.) Another quote I liked was
“A rat is unimpressed by talk of a just peace, he recognizes no flag and
his ideology is food. Food! Food!” But right below this was a poem called
Rat Jelly which was one of the most disgusting entries in the book.
The bibliography is
extensive, and I will probably try to locate some of the books Hodgsen quotes from, but I wish she had included short
synopses of the books (like the movies) so you would know if it was worth
trying to get the book. I found the
index very limited, listing mostly authors or book titles, with no entries for
topics such as “teeth” or “tails.”
There are a few interesting
illustrations in the book, as well as many of dead rats, rats being killed, or
rats attacking people. All in all,
this is not the best book for someone who loves rats. If you find it in your bookstore, I
suggest you take a look at the suit of armor on page 105, but buy the book at
your own risk!
Book Review:
Tatti Wattles, A Love
Story
(This
review appeared in the April 1997 issue of the
Rat Report.)
This
book written by performance artist Rachel Rosenthal is a delight. Published in 1996 by Smart Art Press, it
is hardback and has 61 pages. Rachel tells how she rescued a young rat
who she later named Tatti
Wattles from another performance artist’s display and fell in love. Tatti Wattles
became her constant companion, going everywhere with her and even participating
in some of her performances.
“Tatti had great stage presence,”
wrote Rachel. “He loved posing
for photographers and videos. He
loved being in the limelight and never hid or presented his backside. All the photos show him, handsome,
looking directly into the camera.
In performance, he always knew where his light was.”
Through
his public appearances Tatti Wattles became a rat
ambassador, making many converts.
Rachel describes so well the various attitudes all we rat lovers have
experienced when sharing our rats with others, from loving acceptance, to
squeamishness, to outright revulsion.
Rachel’s eloquent words describing her loving relationship with Tatti contrasts sharply with the words she uses to descibe the more usual societal opinion of rats--words
we’ve all heard before!
Rachel fills her book with
her personal philosophy about how we should see and interact with animals as
individuals with their own rights, not slaves. She explains how Tatti
Wattles became her closest friend and gave her emotional support during bad
times. She was devastated when Tatti died of heart disease. After his death, she went to a workshop
on shamanism and underwent a shamanistic “journey” where she was
reunited with Tatti and learned that rats were her
Power Animal. Some of these
journeys, which she said taught her a great deal about herself, are illustrated
in color throughout the book. Other
charming black and white drawings show Tatti Wattles
in life. At the end of the book is
a philosophical discussion of the book and Rosenthal’s performance art by
Jacki Apple.
Rachel
has unfortunately included a couple of factual errors in the book. She wrote, “These rodents have no
bones, only cartilage, which explains how they squeeze into the tiniest
apertures.” This is
incorrect. Rats have bones just
like all other mammals. They are
just very flexible! Tatti had overgrown teeth which required periodic
trimming. Rachel wrote,
“Rodents afflicted with this abnormality in the wild would grind their
teeth down on hard surfaces. But Tatti was civilized and had lost all such instincts. He only liked soft food.” Tatti had a
medical problem, either malocclusion or some other problem of the teeth or jaw
that prevented him from eating hard food.
Wild and domestic rats normally grind their teeth together to keep them
the right length, but they can’t do this a medical problem.
Other
than these two mistakes, I have enjoyed this book very much, more so the more I
read it. Rachel’s writing is
bold and frank. For example,
here’s how she described the young Tatti. “His baby coat was sleek and
black, and he had a white belly, white socks, and balls almost as big as his
body.” Her story is
filled with observations and feelings that only another true rat lover will
recognize and understand. This book
is truly a poem of love for a rat, and for all rats, and worth having in any
rat lover’s library.
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