The Rat Fan Club
Book Reviews:
Non-Fiction
by Debbie
“The Rat Lady”
Book Review: Animal
Wise
This book was written by Virginia Morell and published by Crown in 2013. Its subtitle is The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures, and the premise is that animals have minds, personalities, moods and emotions and that they think and feel. I fully agree with this conclusion and I enjoyed this book very much. It is well written with some very engaging stories. It has chapters on ants, fish, birds, elephants, dolphins, chimpanzees, dogs, and…a whole chapter about rats! The rat chapter is called The Laughter of Rats, and although it’s not as long as I would have liked, it is good. It mostly stays on the topic of laughter and play, but it does mention that rats also do dream, can be altruistic, and that they like sex. The rats talked about in the chapter are laboratory rats, and brief mention is made of rats receiving electric shocks, and a few other disturbing moments. I was fascinated to learn that rats can choose to endure pain if, for instance, they smell a cat and feel that it’s better to freeze than to escape the pain. The book says that rats will run a complex maze to be tickled, but not to be petted, but I can only assume this is because they are lab rats, so not as socialized as pets, and therefore not that cuddly.
There
were a few errors in the book. She said the lab rats Dr. Panksepp
uses in his laughter research were a strain called Long-Evans “which
scientists had bred in 1915 from the wild Rattus norvegicus, or Norwegian
rat…”
I have to warn potential readers that the chapter The Educated Dolphin has a tragic ending, and the chapter called The Wild Minds of Dolphins includes a very short bit of explicit sex. Although there is mention of a few painful experiments in this book (mostly on the rats unfortunately), overall it is a very positive view of how science is starting to respect the mental abilities of animals.
Book Review: The
Lab Rat Chronicles
This book was written by Kelly Lambert, PhD and published by the Penguin Group in 2011. The first few chapters are written in academic-ese and is very difficult to read. You pretty much need a college degree to read it, and I had to read several sentences over and over again to understand what they meant. But as the book goes along, the writing becomes easier and easier to read. I can only imagine that the author began the book in the same mode she uses to write scientific papers, and gradually gained a more conversational style. Too bad she didn’t go back and edit the first part of the book to make it easier to read.
Dr. Lambert is a behavioral neuroscientist who mostly does research on rats. In this book she compiles a wide range of research done on rats and other rodents to try to find information that we can apply to human behavior. The topics include improving health, increasing intelligence, boosting emotional resilience, economics, diplomacy, the influence of maternal and paternal care, sex, aggression and addiction. For instance, researchers found that rats who live alone in small bare cages are more likely to become addicted to drugs than rats who live in a large enriched environment with a group of other rats.
Most of the facts about rats in the book are accurate. However, the author does have an erroneous idea of the life stages of rats, but then that’s not surprising considering that most lab rats are weaned at 3 weeks of age. She said that rats 4-5 months of age were in early adulthood, and rats 12 months old were middle-aged. I consider rats 4-5 months old to be equivalent to about 14 in human years, and 12-month-old rats the equivalent of 35 in human years. Do we consider 35 to be middle-aged these days? Another experiment gave rats experience with cocaine, then bred them and tested whether they would prefer baby rats or cocaine. Until the babies were about 16 days old, the moms preferred the babies, but after this they chose the cocaine instead. Dr. Lambert said, “The older pups weren’t quite adolescent age, but mothers of teens often express a maternal kinship of sort with the rats when I tell them about this study, as if they could imagine that a hit of cocaine would sometime be more appealing than dealing with the challenges of their teenage children!” No kidding that 16-day-old baby rats “aren’t quite adolescents.” Baby rats at this age have only opened their eyes 2 days earlier, so are more like toddlers. She told of one experiment that looked at aggression where large male rats were each housed with a female, and then the female was removed and a smaller male put in the cage. She said the large male rats weighed about 300 grams (under ¾ lb), which is actually a small rat. Adult male pet rats average one pound, and in my experience, lab rats tend to be as big or bigger, so a rat this size would not be an adult, but would probably be less than 6 months old. When talking about barbering, she said it has not been seen in rodents living in natural habitats, but is only found in labs. I guess she didn’t do any research about pet rats. I was also shocked to read that she says bedding in the lab is typically corncob or cedar shavings. I can’t imagine that any labs still use cedar shavings.
One of the studies she mentioned is very relevant to pet rats. They found that rats housed alone were 3 times more likely to get mammary tumors, with half of the isolated rats getting tumors, while only 15% of rats housed in groups got tumors. The book includes lots of interesting research, but reading about some of the experiments is unpleasant, for instance, when rats were given electric shocks. If you don’t mind reading about such things, then it is an interesting book.
Book Review: Two
Pet Rats
This small book written by Cicely Rude and published by CreateSpace in 2009, is a story of the author’s two rats, which includes some information about keeping rats as pets. Most of the information in its 28 pages is accurate, although it implies that the scientific name of the domestic rat is Rattus domesticus, when it is actually Rattus novegicus, or possibly Rattus norvegicus domesticus. The design of the book is nice with cute photos, and the rats are particularly attractive. A few of the beginning pages, where she talks about their cage, bedding and food, are a little slow, but the stories of the rats’ antics are especially enjoyable and written with humor. This book would be a nice addition to any rat lover’s library.
Book Review: OH,
RATS! The story of rats and people
This
children’s book was written by Albert Marrin,
illustrated by C. B. Mordan and published by Dutton
Children’s Books in 2006. I
really liked the design, with the book printed in black, white and red, but I
didn’t like the fact that most of the rats in the
illustrations—even dark-colored wild rats—were given red eyes. Most of the rats in the illustrations
were done quite well, but the rat on the cover, while detailed in every other
respect, is missing claws.
Most
of the information in the book is interesting and presented well, but I found a
few problems. It says a rat can
squeeze through a pipe the width of a quarter. This is a common
“fact” that often appears about rats. The truth is that a small
baby rat could do this, but not an adult.
This book says a rat can perform this feat by collapsing its
skeleton. This just isn’t
going to happen.
It
also says it is no problem for a rat to chew through a sheet of iron a half
inch thick or a slab of concrete four inches thick. Uh, wait a minute. While it may be possible for a rat to
chew through these substances, it would definitely be a mighty labor of many many days, and not the easy task the book implies.
I
assume because the book is for children, the author simplifies some facts, and
in a few cases I feel he over simplifies it to the point of creating
misunderstandings or even errors.
For instance, he says rats can communicate with each other at a distance
of 40 to 50 feet using ultrasound (so far so good) but then goes on to say that
elephants make similar sounds that carry for miles. Elephants actually use infrasound (sound
too low for us to hear), not ultrasound, so I think the way the author said
this is very confusing.
Another
statement I found confusing said “Eventually the Norway rat pushed the
black rat out of the cities. Now it
lives mostly in rural areas—in the ground, houses, barns, and
silos.” I think this must be
a mistake.
He
said “tame” rats (he should have used the term
“domestic”) cost from $10 to $50—a $50 rat is one special
rat! He must have been talking
about lab rats. In a section about
different cultures around the world that eat rats, in most cases he was not
clear about which species of rats are eaten. As far as I know, no culture eats
There
are also some statements that are just false. After explaining that wild rats can
catch fish, he says rats love water.
He’s obviously not met any of my rats! He says that a rat is old after 9 months
of age, but this is actually the rat’s peak physical age, and I
don’t consider a rat to be middle aged until 1 ½ years. When talking about wild rats that are
immune to poisons, so-called “super-rats”, he said that these
super-rats reproduce twice as fast as ordinary rats. This is not true. “Super-rats” produce more
babies than rats killed by poison, obviously, but their reproductive rate is no
more than that of “normal” rats. In a sidebar that lists the most serious
diseases that rats can transmit to humans, he includes rat-bite fever. While it is true that someone infected
with rat-bite can die, the disease is rare, can be treated with antibiotics,
and very rarely causes death.
Finally,
he makes the ridiculous statement that rat breeding requires skill, and
explains how mycoplasma-free lab rats were first
created (delivered by C-section and hand raised) as if that is how all lab rats
are currently produced. All lab
rats are now myco-free and are produced in the usual
way.
All
together, there is about one error per each 5 pages in this book. Fortunately, my rat care book is listed
in the back under Some More Books to Read.
Book Review: Rat
This
book was written by Jonathan Burt and published by Reaktion
Books in 2006, and is pretty much the typical book about the historical
relationship between rats and humans, mostly focusing on wild rats and the
usual negative attitudes. It is written in a fairly academic style, but
it’s pretty easy to read. The strangest thing I found about this book is
how it manages to almost completely avoid talking about pet rats! In the
introduction the author points out that wild rats are loathed by people, and
all relationships with rats, except for the rat fancy, is marked by violence
and death. Notice he used the term “rat fancy,” by which he means
the breeding of rats for show. He states that the breeding of lab rats for
research is mirrored by the breeding for “pet shows and the rat fancy.
Thus is the rat in turn exploited.” The word
“pet” is only used in three other places in the book. On page 130
the title of chapter 6 is “Pets, Vermin, Food,” although nothing is
actually said about pets, and combining these topics is just sick. The first
sentence is “The British rat fancy was institutionalized in 1901 when
rats made their first appearances in pet shows.” On the next page, the
caption for a photo of a little girl with a pet white rat says: “An
Edwardian Christmas card reflects the popularity of rats as pets.” But no
where else in the book does he discuss or make any more mention of rats as
pets! On page 135 he mentions the establishment of World Rat Day in 2003, but
associates it with fancy rats, not pet rats. He omits any mention of how rats
were first domesticated.
Impressively,
most of the facts about rats that are included are actually correct. The
exceptions are the age roof rats are weaned (3-4 weeks on page 30-31) and the
heat cycle of the Norway rat (3-4 days on page 32). Roof rats nurse their
babies for at least 5-6 weeks, and the heat cycle of the Norway rat is 4-5
days. On page 86 the caption of a photo from the 1993 movie Willard mistakenly says the rats were animatronic, when they were actually CGI, and the text says
that the two main rats in the movie were played by Gambian pouched rats, when
only the Ben character was. On page 133 a photo caption mislabels a silver fawn
as a pink-eyed white. On page 134 the author repeats the myth that fancy rats
derive mainly from lab rats, even though we know that rats were first bred as
pets.
The
other chapter titles are Natural History, Natural Historians and the Rat, Rat
Representations, The ‘Hero of Science,’
and Plague and Pollution. The Natural History chapter includes a fascinating
illustration of the location of the muscles that work the jaw, showing just how
those eye pops are produced! There
is also a frightening photo of teeth that are so overgrown they form a complete
circle. Some of the other illustrations are interesting, including historical
drawings, pictures from literature, a rat x-ray, sculptures, and a Hero Rat
sniffing landmines, but there are also photos of piles and strings of dead rats,
and torturous traps. The chapter on lab rats explains some of the awful things
done to rats in the name of science, and the section on extermination describes
some truly hideous methods of killing rats.
While
this book includes some interesting information, and would be a good addition
to a collection of all things rat, it includes lots of stuff that would be
extremely upsetting to many rat lovers.
Book Review: Rat: How the World’s Most Notorious Rodent Clawed its Way to the Top
by Jerry Langdon,
Book Review: Animals
and the Afterlife
I was very happy to read this book, which
is well organized and well written. It is filled with amazing stories of
contacts between humans and not only animals who have
passed on, but also animals who are still living. It is hard to maintain
skepticism about life after death, animal communication and the intelligence
and spirituality of animals in the face of so much evidence.
But
the best part of this book is the many stories Kim tells about her
relationships with her rats! The
book is a collection of stories from many different people, most about other
kinds of animals, but woven throughout are Kim’s own stories, most of
which are about rats. These stories are an absolute joy to read, and I feel
that every pet lover who reads this book will have their eyes opened about
rats. Whether Kim meant the book to be a testimonial about rats or not (and
most likely she did!) it paints a most glowing picture of their nature. Time
after time as I read the book I found tears running down my face. Thank you,
Kim for a wonderful book!
Book Review: Pleasurable
Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good
This
book written by Rat Fan Club member Jonathan Balcombe,
Ph.D. of
I
found this book extremely enjoyable and interesting. I heartily recommend it to anyone who is
interested in animal behavior.
Jonathan has done a great job of explaining the scientific evidence that
animals experience pleasure in a way that is easy to understand. The book also shows off Jonathan’s
sense of humor. For instance, in
Chapter 3, Feeling Smart, The Intelligence of Pleasure, he says, “Ultimately,
there can be no decisive proof of animal pleasure, any more than there can be
absolute proof that smoking causes lung cancer, or that bacon is bad for you
(it’s certainly bad for pigs.)”
Dr.
Jonathan Balcombe is an animal behavior Research
Scientist for the Washington, DC-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and
author of The Use of Animals in Higher Education: Problems,
Alternatives, and Recommendations.
In addition to published papers on the behavioral ecology of bats,
birds, and turtles, he has written many scholarly and lay articles on animal
use in education and research. A popular speaker, he has given invited
presentations in the
Of
course, Jonathan talks about rats in his book! In fact, rats are mentioned on more than
24 of the pages. Most of the
references are to the research that shows rats enjoy playing and wrestling, and
they laugh when they do so. But
other topics are presented too.
Jonathan describes the different personalities and activity preferences
of his 3 girl rats, and talks some about their food preferences. He also talks about the research that
shows rats dream. Also mentioned is
that rats do better in a maze after being exposed to music by Mozart rather
than modern music by Philip Glass, and that rats will restrain their behavior
if they see that it will cause harm to another rat. Cool!
Here are a few excerpts that
feature rats:
Rats
at Play: Rats mostly play when they
are young, but grown-up rats are also motivated to play. In a laboratory study,
both juvenile and adult male rats showed a significant preference for a box
containing a free moving rat compared to either a box with a rat confined
behind a Plexiglas barrier or a box with no rat. The confined rat was visible,
but not available to play with.
When
rats are anticipating opportunities to play, their brains release a
“pleasure chemical” called dopamine. Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp reports a close
link between such chemicals and play, and that rats enjoy being playfully
tickled. These findings complement ample behavioral evidence that play is
enjoyable. Studies at the
Rats
and Food: Rats will enter a deadly
cold room and navigate a maze to retrieve gourmet tidbits (e.g., shortbread,
meat paté, and CocaCola®).
If they happen to find their regular (and less tasty) commercial rat chow at
the end, they quickly return to their cozy nests, where they stay for the
remainder of the experiment. But if they find a tasty treat, they feed on it
before returning home, then return repeatedly for
more. This is a rodent version of shunning the fruit bowl and dashing out to
the convenience store on a rainy night to get some donuts.
Live
and Let Live: One of my favorite
anecdotes comes from naturalist-photographer Lewis Wayne Walker, who discovered
a wild rat running in a rodent exercise wheel he had stored in his barn. By
itself, it’s just an isolated, if compelling, observation. But
what’s to keep people from setting out running wheels (instead of traps)
in places where rats live and monitoring the results?
I do
have to warn you that the chapter on sex is quite explicit, so be
prepared. The beginning of the
chapter says: “Warning: making the case for sexual pleasure in animals
requires venturing into territory that may be distasteful to some readers. If you may be one such, I suggest you
skip to the next chapter.”
The
publisher is Macmillan and the book sells for $24.95. For more on Jonathan and his book tour,
visit his website at www.pleasurablekingdom.com.
Book Review: Rats, Observations on the
History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants
by Robert Sullivan,
Book Review: Angel
Animals, Divine Messengers of Wisdom and Compassion
This book was written by Allen
& Linda Anderson and published in 2003 by New World Library. It includes
many wonderful and touching stories of how animals have had an impact on
peoples’ lives. The best story, however, is by Fleur Wiorkowski
of
Book Review: The Story of Rats
by S. Anthony Barnett, published in
Book Review:
Animal Miracles
This
book, Animal Miracles: Inspirational and
Heroic True Stories, by Brad Steiger and Sherry
Hansen Steiger, is a treasure. A paperback, it was
published by Adams Media Corporation in 1999. There is only one story about a
rat in the book, and it is about a wild rat, not a pet rat, but it is a good
story. A wild rat becomes friends
with a miner. The miner shares his
food with the rat and the rat keeps the miner company. One day, the rat became very agitated
and ran up to the miner and then ran away several times. The miner finally realized the rat was
trying to tell him something and followed the rat. Immediately after that, the roof of the
mine where the miner was working collapsed. The rat had saved the miner’s
life!
The
book contains 50 amazing, touching, and truly miraculous stories of animals
helping humans. Most of the stories
feature dogs and cats, but there are also stories about birds, horses, pigs,
cows, dolphins, sea lions, a whale, a monkey, an elk, and even a sea turtle, a
stingray, and a shark. The stories
were collected by Brad Steiger and Sherry Hansen Steiger and published in 1999 by Adams Media
Corporation. This book would be a
wonderful addition to any animal lover’s library.
Book Review: The Rat: A Perverse Miscellany
by Barbara Hodgson, Ten Speed Press, 1997
Book Review:
Tatti Wattles, A Love
Story
This
book written by performance artist Rachel Rosenthal is a delight. Published in 1996 by Smart Art Press, it
is hardback and has 61 pages. Rachel tells how she rescued a young rat
who she later named Tatti
Wattles from another performance artist’s display and fell in love. Tatti Wattles
became her constant companion, going everywhere with her and even participating
in some of her performances.
“Tatti had great stage presence,”
wrote Rachel. “He loved
posing for photographers and videos.
He loved being in the limelight and never hid or presented his backside. All the photos show him, handsome,
looking directly into the camera.
In performance, he always knew where his light was.”
Through
his public appearances Tatti Wattles became a rat
ambassador, making many converts.
Rachel describes so well the various attitudes all we rat lovers have
experienced when sharing our rats with others, from loving acceptance, to
squeamishness, to outright revulsion.
Rachel’s eloquent words describing her loving relationship with Tatti contrasts sharply with the words she uses to descibe the more usual societal opinion of rats--words
we’ve all heard before!
Rachel fills her book with
her personal philosophy about how we should see and interact with animals as
individuals with their own rights, not slaves. She explains how Tatti
Wattles became her closest friend and gave her emotional support during bad
times. She was devastated when Tatti died of heart disease. After his death, she went to a workshop
on shamanism and underwent a shamanistic “journey” where she was
reunited with Tatti and learned that rats were her
Power Animal. Some of these
journeys, which she said taught her a great deal about herself, are illustrated
in color throughout the book. Other
charming black and white drawings show Tatti Wattles
in life. At the end of the book is
a philosophical discussion of the book and Rosenthal’s performance art by
Jacki Apple.
Rachel
has unfortunately included a couple of factual errors in the book. She wrote, “These rodents have no
bones, only cartilage, which explains how they squeeze into the tiniest
apertures.” This is incorrect. Rats have bones just like all other
mammals. They are just very
flexible! Tatti
had overgrown teeth which required periodic trimming. Rachel wrote, “Rodents afflicted
with this abnormality in the wild would grind their teeth down on hard surfaces. But Tatti was
civilized and had lost all such instincts.
He only liked soft food.”
Tatti had a medical problem, either
malocclusion or some other problem of the teeth or jaw that prevented him from
eating hard food. Wild and domestic
rats normally grind their teeth together to keep them the right length, but
they can’t do this a medical problem.
Other
than these two mistakes, I have enjoyed this book very much, more so the more I
read it. Rachel’s writing is
bold and frank. For example,
here’s how she described the young Tatti. “His baby coat was sleek and
black, and he had a white belly, white socks, and balls almost as big as his
body.” Her story is
filled with observations and feelings that only another true rat lover will
recognize and understand. This book
is truly a poem of love for a rat, and for all rats, and worth having in any
rat lover’s library.
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