The View of the Rat in Culture Over Time

For Environmental Studies 113 at University of Wisconsin-Madison Project One Part Three Rachel Dutch Section 307 Jessie Conaway/Andrew Case 1st October 2012

[rattusphere-blog]

References

Amori, G. & Cristaldi, M. Mitchell-Jones, Anthony J.. ed. The Atlas of European Mammals. London: Academic Press. 1999, pp. 278–279.

Phil Drabble "Staffords and baiting sports". In Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald, ed.. The book of the dog. 1998, Los Angeles: Borden.

Estes, Sally, Booklist (1995). Editorial review of The Bellmaker.

David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace, True Story The Pied Piper of Hamelin Never Piped: About the true story behind the legend of the Pied Pit per of Hamelin. Great Happenings That Never Happened 1975–1981 "The People's Almanac" series of books and posted on Trivia-Library.Com Accessed September 4, 2008.

M Harcourt. The Deshnoke ‘Karni Mata temple and political legitimacy in Medieval Rajasthan. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 1993 - Taylor & Francis.

S. D. Langton, D. P. Cowan, A. N. Meyer. Journal of Applied Ecology, Vol. 38, No. 4

(Aug., 2001), pp. 699-709.

Meerburg BG, Singleton GR, Leirs. "The Year of the Rat ends: time to fight hunger!". Pest Manag Sci 65 (4): 351–2, 1991.

Florent Sabbane, Donald Garder, Daniel Long, Brian B. Gowen, B. Joseph Hinnebusch. Kinetics of Disease Progression and Host Response in a Rat Model of the Bubonic Plague. Laboratory of Human Bacterial Pathogenesis, Rocky Mountain Laboratories, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, Montana, May 2005, Pages 1427–1439.

Vinay Kumar Srivastava. Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 28, No. 3, Jul., 1994, pp. 589-614.

Clara Yen. Why Rat comes first: A story of the Chinese zodiac. Children's Book Press  (San Francisco, Calif.), 1991.

[rattusphere-blog]

Rats, generally considered disgusting and unseemly animals throughout history and in modern cultural sources, are depicted as multifaceted creatures, with a vast array of positive and negative examples, over time and across world cultures. Sadly, it is true that many will still fear and distrust rats, whether they advocate for the rat's elimination from cities and households as domesticated pets, or simply shriek in terror at the sight of one. Though some wild rats may deserve this reaction (specifically sewer rats who are probably infested with some sort of disease), the hope that the public's general view of the typically docile animal persists and resonates in many animal rights circles. Perhaps with movies like Ratatouille, and the spread of knowledge about the Karni Mata will influence this opinion, and change the overall negative view of rats in the future.

[rattusphere-blog]

Sewer rats (typically brown rats) are the common rat one would consider when thinking of rats in a dingy apartment, or crawling around in the sewage system, or in alleyways, and are found especially in larger cities. They scavenge on food humans have lying around, and it is estimated that there are 81 million rats in London alone (Amori et al 1999). When they reside in an area not populated by humans, they generally congregate around river banks (Amori et al 1999).

[rattusphere-blog]

Rats are commonly known for their use in scientific research and laboratory testing, specifically to test strains of viruses or diseases to create cures that can help humans as well as the rats they are tested on. Rats are used so often to test these because of their high birth rate, genetic consistency, and similarity to human biology (Langton et al 2001). As with any sort of animal testing, animal rights and ethics are always a controversy, including with rats. However, scientists performing the experiment must follow an ethical protocol during the testing, which includes numbing the rats so they do not feel any pain. A major problem with this is that not all scientists follow this rule, and get away with animal cruelty. Animal testing, however, is very important in medicinal research and without rats being tested specifically, we would not have had many of the prescription drugs we have today (Langton et al 2001).

[rattusphere-blog]

Rats were first used as pets (in recorded history) during the time of rat-baiting (Drabble 1998), and since then have been bred and domesticated to come in a variety of coat colors, and to pose no more health risk than any other domesticated animal. The most common variety of pet rat is the fancy rat, though albino lab rats and brown rats are common and well-behaved as well.

[rattusphere-blog]

Moving on to the modern/real life portion of the blog.

[rattusphere-blog]

Willard (and its sequel, Ben), is a horror film from 1971 (remade in 2003) about a mentally disturbed boy who befriends and trains rats to murder his enemies.

[rattusphere-blog]

The Pied Piper, or the Pied Piper of Hamelin, is a story that was re-imagined in the 16th century about a man who lured the pesky plague rats out of the town of Hamelin in Lower Saxony, Germany, but became angered when the citizens refused to pay him, prompting to use his rat-luring magic on children. Though rats are definitely a negative force in this story, they are not the central antagonists, but the reason for his introduction. It is also of interest to note that the story was rat-free before around 1559, and existed to explain the disappearance of several children from the village of Hamelin (Wallechinsky et al 1975-1981).

[rattusphere-blog]

In the Harry Potter series, the character Peter Pettigrew is an rat animagus, meaning he has the ability to transform himself into a rat. Pettigrew is described as having many rat-like qualities, all of which imply him to be a fairly ugly person. He is also a secondary antagonist (though it can be argued he was a good guy when he initially became able to turn into a rat), working directly for the evil Lord Voldemort and disguising himself as the pet of the secondary protagonist Ron Weasley for 13 years. As there are no other rats in the series, they are implied to be a negative animal in the context of the Potter universe.

[rattusphere-blog]

In the famous book 1984, towards the end of the novel, the protagonist Winston, who has mentioned throughout the book about a primal fear of rats, has them used against him as a torture mechanism to force him to betray his love interest Julia, which leads to his full conversion to the Party and reintegration into society, as his betrayal inadvertently caused him to lose his love for Julia, and replace it with a love of Big Brother.

[rattusphere-blog]

In the film The Great Mouse Detective (one of my personal favorites, despite its depiction of rats), based on the book series Basil of Baker Street by Eve Titus, is loosely based on the Sherlock Holmes story, with a mice playing the equivalent of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, and the evil rat, Professor Ratigan, playing a role similar to Professor Moriarty in the Holmes books.

[rattusphere-blog]

Onto the negative portrayals of rats in the media, in the book series Redwall by Brian Jacques, in a world populated solely by anthropomorphized animals, mice are the protagonists who fight against many other creatures, but primarily the rats. The book series has been criticized by some for simplifying the "good guys" and the "bad guys" by their species (Estes 1995). Exceptions to this do include one rat, who changes his mind and decides to be good, and wildcats, who vary in moral codes.

[rattusphere-blog]

Templeton the rat was a character in the film Charlotte's Web. He was a side character who mostly provided comic relief, but still shown in a positive light (though the stereotypes about rats doing nothing but eating were exaggerated greatly for his portrayal).

[rattusphere-blog]

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, and it's film counterpart, the Secret of NIMH, feature a fieldmouse as the protagonist, but rats (specifically lab rats) play a very important and positive role in the story, in which human scientists did experiments on rats to boost their intelligence to a human-like level, prompting the rats to escape their enclosure. Humans are largely unseen in this film/novel, but they are implied to be the enemy.

(Second photo features Mrs. Frisby on the left (renamed Mrs. Brisby), and Nicodemus, a rat, on the right. Nicodemus plays the role of the wise mentor character- a role unheard of for a rat to play in an anthropomorphized animal setting).

[rattusphere-blog]

Ratatouille, a Pixar Animation Studios film that came out in 2007, is one of the most well-known examples of a rat being portrayed in a positive light in American (and worldwide) culture.

[rattusphere-blog]

Moving into the film and cultural media section of the blog.

[rattusphere-blog]

Rats were used in American propaganda posters during World War II as a cruel caricature of Japanese soldiers.