WILDLIFE
They’re perhaps the most hated animal on earth and there are at least 10 million of them scuttling around the UK, but do rats deserve the fear and loathing they inspire? As infestations rise, the author of a new book on the rodents reports…
Of all the many animals Sir David Attenborough has encountered over the years, there is one that makes his skin crawl. ‘I really, really hate rats,’ he once revealed.
‘I don’t mean that I mildly dislike them, as I dislike, let us say, maggots. I mean that if a rat appears in a room, I have to work hard to prevent myself from jumping on the nearest table.’
He is far from alone. Despite being perhaps our closest companion, shadowing humans through the ages, rats occupy the distinction as the most widely loathed creature on earth.
And yet for an animal which occupies such a prominent role in our culture and imaginations, it is remarkable how little we actually know about the rat. Take, for example, the old adage that you are never more than six feet away from a rat. In short, nobody knows the true number. Much of what is floating around the internet is peddled by the pest-control industry, which clearly has a vested interest in an overinflated perception of the threat they pose. Estimates of Britain’s rat population range from 10.5 million to in excess of 200 million. Most experts point towards the former as the more accurate representation.
Lockdown brought rats closer to our lives.
As restaurants closed, rats moved nearer to our homes in search of food. There were stories of rodents colonising abandoned offices, and nesting in the engine bays of parked cars.
This trend appears to have continued. Earlier this year, the British Pest Control Association reported a 115% increase over three months in people seeking advice for rat infestations. In part, this has been explained by cash-strapped local authorities reducing bin collections. This has sparked concerns that the number could spiral. Such terror of a population explosion taps into a nascent fear. Rats represent the worst of us. They are rapacious, over-sexed, destructive and pestilent. Rat is an insult; a verb as well as a noun. The dishonest ‘rat’ each other out. When cornered, the morally culpable turn upon each other like rats in a sack.
