The Story of Rats: Their impact on us, and our impact on them by S. Anthony
Barnett, Allen & Unwin, A$24.95, ISBN 1865085197, available from
Allen & Unwin, Sydney. Email: info@allenandunwin.com
NO ONE sent for the rat catcher when wild Norway rats turned up at Clark
University in Massachusetts in 1894. Instead, the resident scientists were
delighted. They recruited the Rattus norvegicus arriving in their lab to tease
out the connections between diet and alcoholism. These rough-and-ready rodents
did the job, but were replaced a year later by the ultimate animal model: the
domesticated white Norway rat.
Since then, rats and researchers have become successful working partners.
Together, they have revealed many of nature鈥檚 secrets, from the biochemical
pathways linking stress to ill health or death, to the anatomy of the mammalian
brain. Nobel prizes, fame and research papers mark this fruitful
collaboration.
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But it has not always been an easy relationship. After all, numerous
investigations have centred on a deadly question: how to get rid of the lab
rat鈥檚 rapacious, disease-bearing cousins.
Fortunately for rat-shy humans, Anthony Barnett has some answers, and he
tells all in The Story of Rats. Barnett, who is emeritus professor of zoology at
the Australian National University in Canberra, has been interested in the
rodents for some time. Fifty years ago he was a young Oxford graduate drafted
into military service. His enemy: Blitz-weary rodents who had taken up residence
in the London Undergound.
Barnett went on to fight the good fight against the rat in Scotland, North
America, India and Australia, a route charted in his chatty little book. It鈥檚
almost a naturalist鈥檚 notebook, full of digressions, facts, history, random
observations and insights into the minds of rats鈥nd researchers.
Barnett鈥檚 book is best savoured on holiday or read aloud: 鈥淒arling, did you
know that Larousse Gastronomique suggests seasoning skinned and cleaned rats
with oil and shallots, and then grilling them over an open fire?鈥� That鈥檚 nice,
dear. How many rats per person?