Zero to Hero
1348, England. A single room with a dirt floor, upon which sits a large wooden table. Across from the table a woman stoops over a fireplace, swaying rhythmically and humming to herself. She is stirring supper, which sits in a pot over the crackling fire. On the other side of the table is a wall, and there is a small hole in the wall through which an inquisitive nose peeks, whiskers quivering as they feel the air. Encouraged by the tantalizing smell of stew, the large black rat sneaks out of the hole, sticking to the shadows, and crosses the room, stopping a few feet from the woman. He stares greedily at the pot, black eyes glinting in the firelight. Suddenly, he lifts a hind leg to scratch furiously at an offending flea on his left shoulder. The flea, propelled by the flailing hind paw, sails through the air and lands on the woman's leg, just below the knee. To console itself after its terrifyingly unexpected flight, the flea takes a nice, juicy bite out of the woman's leg. A few days later, the woman is dead.
The scene I have just described to you is one of a woman taken by the Black Death, an epidemic spread by infected fleas carried by black rats. The Black Death, also known as the Bubonic Plague or the Black Plague, is one of the primary reasons for the reputation rats have of being filthy, disease spreading vermin. The Black Plague spread through Europe and Britain during the Middle Ages, killing an estimated third of the population.
Fast forward about 660 years to an underground subway in New York. A woman wearing a navy blue pea coat glances impatiently at her watch, then at the train schedule. When she looks down again, she shrieks in terror. “No, Jane, get away from that disgusting thing!” she cries on spying her young daughter crouching a few feet from a large sewer rat. The rat is eating an unidentifiable leftover from some businessman's lunch. The girl, startled by the fear in her mother's voice, looks at the rat with a new horror and runs back to the safety of her mother's arms. Encounters such as these encourage people to fear and dislike rats. True, rats were a cause of the spread of the plague during the Middle Ages. True, the sewer and subway rats are rather large and dirty, and can carry diseases. But the reputation they have gained as dirty, sneaky, creepy creatures is unfair. Rats are amazing creatures, incredibly social and clever. They are survivors, and can live basically anywhere a human can and eat almost anything a human can eat, and some things that we won't eat. Further, rats are extremely curious creatures who are, when given a chance, quick to explore unfamiliar surroundings. They are also very social, and tend to live in groups. As more and more people recognize their impressive abilities, rats have not only become popular pets, but also life savers.
Rats have been kept as pets since the 19th century. In the 1800s, the countryside was plagued by rats who ate the grain farmers grew and generally made a nuisance of themselves. To solve the problem, rat catchers were hired to exterminate them. It was one such man, a Royal Rat Catcher called Jack Black, who grew to like his furry captives. After catching quite a few rats, he noticed that they all had interesting markings and colors, and he also realized how intelligent they were. Intrigued, he began to keep a few as pets, and later bred different colored ones together and sold the offspring as pets. The idea of keeping domestic rats spread, and people began to want to show rats just like they show different dog breeds.
According to afrma.org, the home website for the American Fancy Rat and Mouse Association, The National Mouse Club was founded in England in 1895. This was an organization which set the show standards for different varieties of domestic mice, and also held mouse shows. In 1901, Mary Douglas, an early rat fancier, asked if rats could be accepted to show as well. As a result, the first classes for Fancy Rats were held in 1901. By 1912, the club name was changed to the National Mouse and Rat Club. All this goes to show that within about a century of going from being merely a pest to being a pest and a pet, rats also became a hobby for many people in the show world. Today, especially in the last 15 years, there has been a huge increase in the popularity of fancy rats as both pets and show animals.
I got my first pet rat when I was seven years old. My mom used to tell me stories about her pet gerbil, and naturally I started to want one too. She told me that if I saved my money, I could get one. When we got to the pet store, however, we discovered that pet gerbils are illegal in California. Luckily, there were four pet rats for sale, as well as various rabbits and hamsters. We left the store with two rats. Those two rats were the first of many I have owned, in pairs or trios, over the past 11 years. My pet rats have changed many people's perspectives of rats. My dad is a prime example. When I first got my rats, he wouldn't touch them. He didn't want us to take them out at first, either, suggesting we leave them in the cage for the first few weeks so they could adjust to the new environment. Over time (meaning about seven years...), he got used to the rats. After watching them obsessively cleaning themselves, he got over his idea that rats are dirty animals. When he watched me hand feeding them treats, and saw them responding to my voice and coming to me when I called, he began to recognize their extreme intelligence and gentle, curious natures. Now, he likes to hold the rats, and even feeds them treats occasionally. Over the course of a few years, his image of rats was entirely changed. I have also convinced many of my friends, and their families, that rats make great pets. Pet rats are similar to extremely low maintenance dogs. They don't require daily walks, nor do they bark or make lots of noise, but they are capable of interacting and playing with people. In fact, that's one of the reasons for their growing popularity as pets; if someone wants a social companion animal in their life but doesn't have the time or space for a dog, a rat is the perfect option. They respond to human voices, just like dogs, and can recognize individual people's voices. Though they don't need as much attention as dogs, rats still do need a lot of care. I take mine out for at least an hour a day and let them free run around the room, and I always have at least two rats at a time. A single rat can get very lonely. If properly handled from a young age, rats will almost never bite you. Of all my thirteen rats, only one has ever bitten me, and that was my fault. Further, rats are extremely intelligent, and are perfectly capable of learning as many tricks as dogs can. Rats are so trainable, in fact, that people have found a life saving job for them.
A few years ago, I was checking my e-mail when I saw a new message from my aunt with the subject “HeroRats.” Intrigued, I opened the email and found this link: http://www.apopo.org/en/. It turns out that people discovered that by combining a rat's intelligence with its extremely good sense of smell, they could train rats to sniff out land mines. It was a perfect solution for finding land mines because the rats aren't heavy enough to trigger the land mine, so can safely cruise around a danger zone, signaling the trainer for every mine they find. Genius! And, rat land mine detection is both much faster and much cheaper than using machines to detect land mines. Rats also have a lower percentage of error, meaning they miss fewer mines than machines do. Rat land mine searching is also more environmentally friendly than using machines, making it a win-win solution to the problem of buried land mines all over the world. The rats are trained with the clicker method: whenever they smell a mine, they scratch at the ground and, if they have correctly identified a mine, the trainer clicks his clicker and gives the rat a treat. Then, when rats complete their training, they can go out and sniff for real mines, scratching the ground whenever they find one. Rats are also being trained to sniff out tuberculosis. Samples are brought from the hospital, and the rats sniff each sample and are able to tell whether it is positive for tuberculosis or not. After about 9 months of training, rats are ready to work for real. They can diagnose thousands of patients per month. The trained rats can screen samples much faster than a lab technician; rats can screen a hundred samples in under twenty minutes, which would take the technician over two days. Further, samples indicated by technicians as negative for tuberculosis are sometimes re-checked by rats and, over the last few years, the rats have corrected around 3,000 misdiagnoses, saving thousands of people from going untreated. In this way, rats have been protecting people both from land mines and tuberculosis, and benefiting the environment. Using rats instead of machines and lab equipment is much more efficient and uses up much less energy.
These are just a few examples of how rats today are helping humans. There are countless others, some indicated in studies involving lab rats. While just a few centuries ago rats were despised and killed at every opportunity, today people are, slowly, growing to appreciate rats for different reasons, whether it be for companionship or safety.
