Man’s' Enemy, the Rat

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19639, 27 July 1935, Page 13 (Supplement)

Man’s' Enemy, the Rat

(Dr. Hans Zinsser of 1 MORE THAN ANY OTHER species of animal, the rat and mouse have become dependent on man, and In so doing they have developed characteristics that are amazingly human. In the first place, like man, the rat is practieally omniverous. It eats anything that lets it and devours its own kind under stress. It adapts itself to all kinds of climate. It climbs and it swims. It knows how to organise hordes, and unlike any other species of thing except man, it makes ferocious war upon its kind. There is no certain knowledge of rats In Europe until shortly after the Crusades. But after its first appearance the “Mus rattus,” or black rat, spread across Europe with a speed superior even to that of the white man in the Americas. Before the end of the 13th century it had become a pest. The legend of the Rattanfanger von Hameln, who pipfed the children into the hollow Koppenberg because the town refused to pay for piping the rats into the Weser, is placed at or about 1284. By this time the rat had penetrated into England. By Shakespeare’s time the black rat was so Formidable a Nuisance that days of prayer for protection against Its ravages were set aside, and rat catchers (see “Romeo and Juliet,” Act III) were Important officials. . ... For twice as long as the Vandals had their day in North Africa, or the Saraaens in Spain, the .black rats had their own way in Europe. Their reign covered the periods of the devastating 'epidemics of plague that swept through the battle areas of the Thirty Years’ War, and the later ones of the 17th century. That they played the leading part in these epidemics seems beyond question. , But just as the established civilisations of Northern , Europe were swept aside by mass invasions of barbarians from the East, so the black rat was eventually wiped out with the incursion of hordes of the brown rat or “Mus decumanus." —the ferocious short-nosed and short-tailed Asiatic lhat swept across the Continent in the early - 18th century; In 1927 great masses of these rats swam the Volga after an earthquake, invading Astrakhan. They were seen in Persia in 1750. By 1775 the brown rat : had como to America from England. It appears to have had a hard time only in countries where the population is spoken of as “thrifty.” It has

Never Done Well In Scotland

or among the Swiss. At the present time the brown rat, or common rat, has spread, across the North American continent from Panama to Alaska, has penetrated to all the less tropical parts of South America, to the South Sea Islands, to New Zealand and to Australia. In fact, it has conquered the world. Only the extreme cold of Greenland does not seem to attract it, ' Wherever it has gone It has driven out the black rat and all rival rodents that compete with It. From the point of view of all other living cre.atures, tho rat is an unmitigated nuisance and pest. There is nothing that can be said in its favour. It burrows for itself when it has to, but when it can it lakes over the habitations of other animals, such ns rabbits and kills them and their young. It carries diseases of man and animals—plague, typhus, trichinella spiralis, rat-bite fever and infectious jaundice. Its destructiveness is almost unlimited. Dr. Lanz, of the United States Department of Agriculture, has made some appropriate estimates of this, as follows:—• Rats eat Indian corn, both during grow'th

* Amazingly Human Characteristics.

Harvard Medical School.) and in the cribs, and have been known to get awav with half the crop. A single rat can eat from 40 to 50 pounds a year. They destroy merchandise, both stored and in transit, books leather, harness, gloves, cloth, fruit, vegetables, peanuts, etc. The rat is the greatest enemy of poultpq killing chickens, young turkeys, ducks, pigeons; also eating enormous numbers or eggs They attack bulbs, seeds and young plants of flowers. They cause enormous damage to buildings by gnawing wood, pipes, walls and foundations. Hagenbeck had to kill three elephants because rats had gnawed their feet. Rats have killed young lambs and gnawed holes In the bellies of fat swine. They have gnawed holes in dams and started floods; they have started fires by gnawing matches; they have bitten holes in, mail sacks and eaten the mail; they have - Caused Famines In India by wholesale crop destruction. They have nibbled at the ears and noses of infants in their cribs; starving rats once devoured a man who entered a disused coal mine. A rat census Is obviously Impossible, but we can appraise the rat population by the numbers that are killed In organised rat campaigns. In 1881 there was a rat plague in certain districts of India. Rewards offered led to the killing of over 12,000,000 rats. Dr. Lantz thinks that in most American cities thero are as many rats as people. The tremendous speed with which rats ewarmed over the continents of the world can he readily understood if one reads' the observations of actual rat migrations made in modern times. The seasonal migration of buildings to the open fields takes place with the eoming of the warm weather and the growth of vegetation; and a return to shelter follows with the cold weather. Dr. Lantz tells us than iq„ 1903 hordes of rats migrated over-several counties in Western Illinois, suddenly appearing when for several years no abnormal numbers had been seen. An eye-witness stated that one moonlight night he heard a rustling in a nearby field and saw a great army of rats cross the road in front of him. The horde stretched as far as lie could see in, the moonlight. Heavy damago was caused in the entire surrounding country of farms and village in the ensuing winter and summer. In South America, rat plagues are periodic in Panama, in Brazil, and occur at intervals of about 30 years. In Chile the same thing lias been observed, at intervals of 15 to 20 years. Studies of these migrations have shown that the rat plagues are associated with the ripening and decay of a dominant Species of hamhoo in each country. For a year or two the ripening seed In the forests supplies a favourite food for the rats. They multiply enormously, and eventually, this food supply failing, they

Go Back to the Cultivated Areas. A famine was caused in 1878 in the State of Parana by the wholesale destruction of the corn, rice and mandioca crops by rats. Man and the'rat are, so far, the most successful animals of prey. They are utterly destructive of other forms of life. Unliko ■plants, bacteria, insects and birds, neither of them is the slightest use to any other species of . living thihgs. Gradually these two have spread across the earth, keeping pace with each other, though continually hostile. Man and the rat will always he pitted against each other as implacable enemies. And tlie rat’s most potent weapons against mankind have . been its perpetual maintenance of the infectious agents of plague and typhus fever.