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The Story of Rats: Their Impact on Us, and Our Impact on Them
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The Story of Rats: Their Impact on Us, and Our Impact on Them Customer Reviews
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Small, interesting book about a small, interesting rodent...
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I bought THE STORY OF RATS by Anthony Barnett for my 14 year old granddaughter who is in an advanced placement science class at her high school, and who has an affinity for repulsive animals (she has a pet lizard she feeds live crickets). I ended up reading the book before I handed it to her, and, what an interesting little book it is. RATS is a paperback with reasonably large type, so easy to read and filled with illustrations and photographs, but more than that it's filled with interesting material (even though it may not be up to AP standards).
Did you know that not only do rats eat human foods such as corn, rice and other grain, but, according to Barnett, humans have been known to eat rats? (The Hindu God Ganesha is accompanied by a rat, but Hindus have a proscription against eating them.) When Britain ruled the waves, British sailors found rats appetizing alternative to hard tack or starvation (apparently, rats cannot board modern ships as easily as they could board the old wooden ships, so they are no longer part of the sea-faring cuisine). However, even today, some folks in the far-flung places the British ships visited and populated with rats still eat them. Photos show markets where vendors sell rats roasted and strung up by their tails along with other butchered meat.
Barnett discusses the bad things rats do such as eat human food stores and spread noxious diseases like the Bubonic Plague and Hanta virus, as well as the good things rats do, such as become pets or lab rats. The author includes chapters discussing the use of rats in experiments, so if you are squeamish about animal testing this may not the book for you (most of the experiments involve psychological studies, not physical torture). Nuclear testing by the US Navy suggest that if and when humans destroy the planet, rats will probably survive. On the other hand, Chernobyl, deserted by humans after the nuclear accident a few years ago, has returned to it's natural state of "wilderness" sans Rattus' who just can't get along without humans. So, it seems even if rats can survive manmade follies, they may perish because they rely on humans for food and shelter. |
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