A fast non-fiction read about the rodent we love to hate (most of us, anyway). Entertaining as well as informative. ( )

In [b]Rat: How the World's Most Notorious Rodent Clawed Its Way to the Top[/b], journalist Jerry Langton superficially explores the history, myth, physiology, habits, psyche and future of the rat. This is a short, super-lite, popular science book in the style of Mary Roach without all the silly jokes and excessive fashion commentary.

In the author's words:
[i]"The rat may be small and ugly. It may not inspire awe as it nibbles and gnaws and skulks its way through life. But it can do something remarkable. It can compete with us as a wild animal and win. It hasn't become our friend like the dog or our captive like cattle, but instead lives alongside us, as constant companion, irritant, and sworn enemy. While human mistakes and negligence have led many species to extinction and thousands to the brink of annihilation, gargantuan, concerted efforts to rid ourselves of rats have failed miserably. There are more now than ever before and their population continues to boom. Truly it is the animal we can't get rid of, the only one capable of challenging human hegemony of the planet, that deserves to be called King of Beasts. You've read a hundred stories about humanity driving some beautiful or terrifying animal to the brink of extinction, or beyond. This is the story about what happens when we try, but cannot."[/i]

The author takes a look at anything to do with rats, including their involvement in the plague, their role as pets, extermination issues, their global spread and commensal relationship with humans etc in a fun, superficial manner and conveniently leaves out any references so you have no idea if the author is sucking "facts" out of his thumb or is reporting actual observable data or scientific studies. The book has many interesting observations and anecdotes that involves rats, but is a rather lacking in substance (and references).

( )

OH NO, NOT RATS!!!

[a:Jerry Langton|35967|Jerry Langton|https://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-d9f6a4a5badfda0f69e70cc94d962125.png] decides to delve into why rats have been around for so long, how they coexist with us, and why people decide to have them as pets. He does so with a distinct anti-rat perspective on the world, and a disturbing unwillingness to ever waver in his opinion or seek out people who think differently than himself. That, my friend, is why the book failed for me. The inherent prejudice against rats and rat-owners that permeated every page and the outright disgust that just saturated his language. That was why it got the dreaded one-star.

Langton has some interesting history of rats, he follows the basic run down of "this is why rats are interesting" that any writer would. Their ribs can collapse being the main fact that seems to shock him. He discounts their inherent intelligence when just about all scientific papers rate them as among one of the most intelligent animals out there, and he counts them as viscous and ready to attack when even the rat hunters he talks to admit that they only do so when disturbed. It's disturbing, just not in the way he meant it to be.

The true failing of this book, however, was the way that he wrote about rat owners. I've owned rats in my time. I found them to be very clean, very affectionate, curious and entertaining pets. I was only ever bit by a rat once, and that was when I startled him and truly deserved it. Langton puts rat owners into two groups: people owning a rat for the novelty and attention seeking deviant nature of it, and people owning rats as an apology to the species and taking it on as a burden. What the hell? What about people who just genuinely like the animal and what it offers...? Nevermind the fact he characterized the first group as being largely obese women with multiple piercings and or tattoos. Just... why? ( )

I've been interested in rats for years, ever since an assignment in my undergraduate psychology class required me to train a rat to perform a series of tasks. Shortly after finishing that assignment, I got my first pet rat, and a year or two later I spent some time in Chicago, researching the city's rodent control program. When I spotted this book in the library, I decided to give it a shot. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a huge disappointment.

Given that Langton is a journalist, I wasn't expecting a very scholarly work. I figured he'd write about his experiences following around people who spent lots of time around rats and pepper his accounts with various well-known rat facts, like “their rib cages are collapsible” and “their teeth grow constantly.” Langton did a bit of that – he spoke with pet rat owners, sewer workers, exterminators, and biologists, and then spent time writing about some of the usual topics that come up in books about rats, like rat physiology, the diseases they can give to humans, and the various ways humans have tried to deal with them. One of the first things that annoyed me about this book, however, was that, although Langton occasionally referred to specific studies, experiments, and reports, he never bothered to cite them. Only the book's occasional “fact boxes” and the quotes that prefaced each chapter ever included sources.

I might not have minded the lack of citations so much if it Langton's biases hadn't been so obvious. He focused on the scariest stories and statistics he could find. My favorite example of one of the book's most meaningless attempts to scare readers is this: “According to a 1995 study, 10 to 100 percent of pet rats and 50 to 100 percent of the wild rats in any given population in North America carry the rat-bite fever virus.” (25) First, which 1995 study? Who conducted it? How was the study performed? Second, why were these numbers even worth citing? The range of percentages is so huge that, at best, all they really tell readers is that pet rats are far less likely to carry the disease than wild rats. Third, rat-bite fever is caused by bacteria, not a virus. I couldn't help but wonder how many other factual mistakes Langton included.

I found it aggravating that, anytime any of Langton's interviewees had something even a little positive to say about rats (or at least not wholly negative), he declared them wrong. When a sewer worker reassured him that the rats they encountered wouldn't bite him unless he picked them up, Langton wrote that he was wrong and went into detail about how rats have been known to bite sleeping people, often children, after smelling food on them. How, exactly, did any of that mean the sewer worker was wrong?

Langton was similarly dismissive of S. Anthony Barnett's opinion that George Orwell's “torture by box of rats” scene in 1984 had little connection to what would have happened in reality. Langton seemed to equate “even docile rats will sometime bite” with “the possibility of having your face eaten off by a box of rats is totally true.” Considering that Barnett had more personal experience with rats than Langton could ever dream of, and considering that Langton spelled Barnett's name wrong each and every time (he spelled it as “Barrett”), I'm more inclined to trust Barnett, thank you very much.

His dismissive, condescending attitude was most obvious when it came to pet rat owners. Supposedly, he spoke to 100 or so pet rat owners, and every single one of them was either an attention-seeking, outside-the-mainstream sort who delighted in the way “normal” people were freaked out by their rats or the kind of person who felt they should be patted on the back for caring for one of society's least-loved animals (I wonder, which category did Langton put Debbie Ducommun in?).

I had to wonder how Langton found these people, because they didn't sound like myself or any of the pet rat owners I've known. In my case, I owned rats because, at the time, fish or caged pets were my only option, and I found rats to be more affectionate and playful than most other rodents I'd had experience with. I rarely took my rats out into public and certainly didn't delight in owning a “weird” pet.

All in all, this is not a book I could recommend to anyone. Its bad editing and lack of documentation, combined with Langton's biases, means that none of its information can be trusted.

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) ( )

Ever wonder why there are so many rats in the world? Or why they're so hard to kill? Or just how responsible they were for the plagues of centuries ago, not to mention the continuous appearance of the bubonic plague today (yes, even in North America)? The resilience of these mammals is utterly astounding, and their ability to adapt and thrive in literally any situation is second only to that of one other mammal species: humans. Rats have complex social structures, are responsible for the extinction of many animal/bird species, waste billions of tons of food per year... also similar to, you guessed it, humans.

While I found the chapters in this book often meandered from topic to seemingly unrelated topic with minimal coherence, overall I found the book full of fascinating information and anecdotes. The author definitely did his research, and I know far more about rats now than I ever expected to. I also know that -- despite my love of animals and adoration of all things furry -- rats can be a real danger to humans and carry diseases that many people (falsely) believe were eradicated decades ago. They destroy food, kill off entire species, and yet are so sophisticated in the way they evaluate food sources, build their homes, and relate to other rats. Pet rat owners need not protest, however, as the author presents a surprisingly unbiased view of the rodent, neither fully condemning rats as villains nor entirely excusing their existence.

Although I don't recommend going into the book looking for careful organization, I do recommend it as a worthwhile and highly educational read for animal lovers and those who are curious about these creatures who share space on every inhabited continent with us (Antarctica excepted... though we don't really "live there" either, all things considered). ( )