Rats Are Adorable
Suki (star girl)
July 13, 2007
New York Times Science writer Nicholas Bakalar in a July 10, 2007 article (“Rat to Rat”) takes a stance of superiority toward rats. “Even a nasty-looking rat can have sterling qualities” he writes, after citing lab experiments on those brown ‘sewer’ guys where the animals treated each other with kindness and generosity. Given that rats in labs are tortured beyond misery and suffering--forced to ingest poisons until they vomit their insides out; forced to run on treadmills in sleep deprivation experiments until they die bleeding from their orifices; starved in ‘obesity’ experiments because the human race is too stupid to stop consuming junk burgers; continuously burned and shocked in other even more worthless experiments, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, to teach them ‘learned helplessness’—and this is just for starters in the torture litany--you name it, humans have inflicted it—given all this, I am astonished that any human could consider taking a condescending stance toward a rat. We humans are the inferior species. We torture. We imprison these sensitive nervous animals in small barren lab cages where they go insane from having no place to run in the few inches of space allotted them. Try looking in a lab after hours—watch the ones still mobile—the ones not near death from metal implanted in their brains, or catheters sticking out of their infected stomachs—watch them engage in what is called ‘stereotypic behavior’: they run back and forth back and forth back and forth back and forth, in frantic desperation, shaking with jumpiness, trying to escape from their metal prisons.
Bakalar refers to the usual “cute pink-eyed white lab rats.” What fantasy science universe does he live in? If they are so cute, why are scientists torturing them in labs?
Incidentally, rats are cute. I know. I’ve had several dozen as companion animals in my home over the last twenty years or so. They have feelings. They express a range of emotions as complex, if not more so, than any other mammal—humans included. Nigel and Cedric were buddies. When Cedric died, Nigel wandered around looking lost for days, hunting for his friend. They’d slept snuggled together for their whole lives, and Nigel didn’t sleep hardly at all for days after Cedric died. He circled and circled, before lying down, and then would get up again, go in search of the missing Cedric.
Gypsy had a stroke and dragged one foot on the ground when she walked. I cooed and cuddled her like crazy when I first saw her limping along all lopsided as she tried to walk. Britney, another of my little girls, whose foot was fine, pretended she was limping, so I’d coo over her, too. ‘Sympathetic intelligence’? Empathy. Rats are capable of all of this.
Speaking of cooing, I’ve noticed many a rat sigh and snuggle deeper into their blankets when I pet them and speak gently and softly to them. They love to nest in blankets, get cosy, just the way people do.
In labs, they are on hard metal in those miserable cages all the time. None of the soft bedding they take such pleasure in.
And food. ‘Lab pellets’ is what they get in their prisons. They are omnivores, with taste buds as sophisticated as ours, capable of appreciating everything we eat. They take incredible delight in everything from fruits and vegetables to oatmeal and peanut butter and all kinds of breads and crackers and cookies and avocado and—just name a food, and they will delight in it.
They make at least 600 different sounds (which we cannot hear without a special detector used to pick up bat noises) when they talk to each other. I didn’t even know they were talking until someone brought a detector over, and I was amazed: not only were they constantly chattering to each other—but to me as well. I was the dumb one. They could hear me talk, but not I them.
I wonder why humans have this obsession with proving, or disproving, that animals have feelings. Maybe it is because we are the species with hearts “two sizes too small.”
Ratatouille is out—a cute Disney Pixar film about a rat who wants to be a chef. I would like to see Disney devote all the profits from this film to getting rats out of labs. And out of pet shops, where they are sold for snake food.
Rats are cute. Let’s not torture them. Let’s release them from the prisons we’ve made for them.
Suki Falconberg, © 2007
Bakalar refers to the usual “cute pink-eyed white lab rats.” What fantasy science universe does he live in? If they are so cute, why are scientists torturing them in labs?
Incidentally, rats are cute. I know. I’ve had several dozen as companion animals in my home over the last twenty years or so. They have feelings. They express a range of emotions as complex, if not more so, than any other mammal—humans included. Nigel and Cedric were buddies. When Cedric died, Nigel wandered around looking lost for days, hunting for his friend. They’d slept snuggled together for their whole lives, and Nigel didn’t sleep hardly at all for days after Cedric died. He circled and circled, before lying down, and then would get up again, go in search of the missing Cedric.
Gypsy had a stroke and dragged one foot on the ground when she walked. I cooed and cuddled her like crazy when I first saw her limping along all lopsided as she tried to walk. Britney, another of my little girls, whose foot was fine, pretended she was limping, so I’d coo over her, too. ‘Sympathetic intelligence’? Empathy. Rats are capable of all of this.
Speaking of cooing, I’ve noticed many a rat sigh and snuggle deeper into their blankets when I pet them and speak gently and softly to them. They love to nest in blankets, get cosy, just the way people do.
In labs, they are on hard metal in those miserable cages all the time. None of the soft bedding they take such pleasure in.
And food. ‘Lab pellets’ is what they get in their prisons. They are omnivores, with taste buds as sophisticated as ours, capable of appreciating everything we eat. They take incredible delight in everything from fruits and vegetables to oatmeal and peanut butter and all kinds of breads and crackers and cookies and avocado and—just name a food, and they will delight in it.
They make at least 600 different sounds (which we cannot hear without a special detector used to pick up bat noises) when they talk to each other. I didn’t even know they were talking until someone brought a detector over, and I was amazed: not only were they constantly chattering to each other—but to me as well. I was the dumb one. They could hear me talk, but not I them.
I wonder why humans have this obsession with proving, or disproving, that animals have feelings. Maybe it is because we are the species with hearts “two sizes too small.”
Ratatouille is out—a cute Disney Pixar film about a rat who wants to be a chef. I would like to see Disney devote all the profits from this film to getting rats out of labs. And out of pet shops, where they are sold for snake food.
Rats are cute. Let’s not torture them. Let’s release them from the prisons we’ve made for them.
Suki Falconberg, © 2007