Here are some wikipedia articles that I thought were interesting as a starting point:
Fancy Rat
Model Organism
Laboratory Rat
Rat Traps
I stumbled upon an absolutely horrific, heartbreaking video on youtube (which I refuse to link to here) that shows a rat caught in a sticky trap, choking on sticky glue and twitching as it tries in vain to free itself. That video actually makes me hate humans . . . and decide that people really are a bunch of bastards. I cant really understand how we can do things like that to other animals. I know I sound like a overly sentimental person or something, but I think the unnecessary torturous death of another living thing is objectively awful. And I'd like to see the rats get revenge. Its a nice idea anyway :)
I hate to post this one, but it makes me want to cry. I thought maybe it was a cartoony sort of image before I clicked on it, but once I realized how sad it was . . .
This leads me to following question: How can people kill rats when there are photos out there like this:
In all seriousness, though, what makes us feel like we can just kill them? Is it their size? What if they were the size of dogs and cats, how would we feel about it then? We have no problem killing insects, but the further up the food-chain we get (or rather the closer to mammals we get) the less comfortable we are with treating them as pests.
Rat-baiting
Another thing that people do (or did anyway) with rats is throw them into a rat pit and have dogs (rat terriers, go figure, jack russels, etc.) try to kill as many as possible within a certain time frame. This is called rat baiting. This is interesting to me for a couple of reasons.
- Again, people are bastards
- This is a connection to dogs in an unexpected way that I tend to forget about . . . the way dogs were often used for cruel things, not just to each other, such as pit-bull fighting, but towards other animals
- People often make a big deal about laboratory animals being treated cruelly, but it seems to me that compared to the other ways rats can die (sticky trap, being smashed in a trap and left to suffocate, or perhaps having their necks wrung by dogs in a pit), lab-rat life is not so inhumane after all. I might revise my thoughts on that if I ever actually spent time in a laboratory setting. . . but. . .
Rats and Garbage in NYC
I also came upon an interesting video talking about rats in New York City. It was really interesting their relationship to garbage and waste - rat expert talks about how WE provide our waste garbage on the streets in NY and then of course there are tons of rats as a result.
Some thoughts on rats
- rats have so left the naimals kingdom and are now the property of science - when you think of rats its either garbage rats or genetically engineered things living in cages. I should make a really huge one. out of scale. really smart one?
- do the rats with all kinds of crazy electrodes on them maybe all connected with glitter. :) glitter red eyes? :) ha. Ok, enough with the glitter.
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