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Jim Patton started off studying anthropology, but switched to zoology after an experience with a rat in the Arizona desert. He has worked in some 12 countries, described a clutch of new species, and had one genus and several species named in his honour. He is the world鈥檚 foremost expert on the terrestrial spiny rats (Proechimys), the most diverse group of rodents in the Amazon. He describes himself as an 鈥渆volutionary biologist who just happens to work on small mammals鈥�. He has just returned from carrying out a survey of the vertebrates in Yosemite National Park for the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California at Berkeley, where he has a research position.

How did you get interested in rats?

When I was a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Arizona in Tucson I met a zoologist called Al Gardner, who is now at the Smithsonian but was then just beginning his master鈥檚 degree. He was studying small mammals and invited me to go out trapping rats with him. We went out to the desert that weekend. I remember distinctly that the first trap I picked up contained a live kangaroo rat. I had never seen an animal like that. I never knew anything like that existed. I decided there and then: 鈥淭his is what I want to do. I鈥檓 not really a people person, I鈥檓 really a rat person.鈥� I walked into my professor鈥檚 office the following Monday, quit anthropology, and then went knocking on doors in the zoology department.

What鈥檚 so special about small mammals for studying evolution?

In some respects nothing, though they have the shortest generation spans among mammals, which makes getting data quicker and easier. Also, rodents comprise nearly 50 per cent of all living mammal species, some 2500 species. Because they live in virtually all the world鈥檚 terrestrial habitats and exhibit an enormous range of adaptations to those habitats at every level, they cover every kind of variation any evolutionary biologist might want to study.

Does your work have any practical application?

It most certainly does. One of the backbones of any conservation effort is an inventory of the species that occur in an area. But it鈥檚 also important to know their evolutionary relationships, so that when you have limited resources for conservation you can choose the lineages that best preserve evolutionary diversity. But I have to say, although I do what I do for all these reasons, and it does have value practically, I do it really because I have fun doing it.

Describe your greatest scientific surprise with rats.

When I set off on an expedition to western Brazil in 1991, I thought I knew everything about the terrestrial spiny rats, which is the most diverse group of rodents in the Amazon, and I thought I could recognise them all readily. But when we got into the field and began to do detailed work, it turned out that about half of those we encountered were new to science. That was an eye-opening experience. And these weren鈥檛 species that you could differentiate only by molecular sequence, they actually looked different in your hand. When I first encountered all this diversity I was totally confused.

Another surprise, on the same trip, was finding a little spiny mouse. When I first saw it I thought it looked like something that was known only from six specimens from the central Andes of Ecuador. It turned out it was the same genus, but several thousand kilometres away from where the other specimens were found.

Can you describe what it鈥檚 like doing fieldwork in very remote places 鈥� which is where you鈥檝e done most of yours?

Take that 1991/92 expedition. My wife and I and a team of Brazilian and American biologists bought a boat in Manaus in central Amazonia and spent the next 12 months going 1000 kilometres up the Jurua river, which has its headwaters on the Brazil-Peru border. There were a couple of towns and sometimes we鈥檇 see a rubber tapper and his family, but for most of that time we were totally by ourselves. We pitched our nice new nylon tent on the roof of our boat, and after six months it had disintegrated because of all the UV radiation.

What did you do for food?

We did some fishing. However, in the dry season fishing is relatively poor. This is surprising, since you鈥檇 think the fish would get concentrated in the little pools, but they don鈥檛. So for the most part we had our choice of oats, beans, rice or noodles: three meals a day, seven days a week. I lost about 35 pounds on that trip.

You鈥檇 imagine the rainforest would be full of luscious fruits鈥�

It is, if you can find them. But that鈥檚 one of the paradoxes of the tropical rainforest: you鈥檝e got all this diversity, but you may have only one tree with edible fruit in 20 square kilometres. Of course, if you follow the monkeys or the toucans you can find it. But you have fieldwork to do. It鈥檚 no Garden of Eden with fruit just waiting to be picked.

I鈥檝e spent a lot of time in remote places in the Amazon where we鈥檝e eaten the animals that we鈥檝e trapped. Those terrestrial spiny rats taste quite good, just like the guinea pigs you get in Peruvian markets, if you singe the hair off and roast them over an open fire with a little grease of one kind or another. Just like a kebab.

What鈥檚 the strangest thing you鈥檝e eaten?

We tried giant anteater once. It wasn鈥檛 very good. It started tasting like formic acid after a few bites. I鈥檝e eaten a large number of different kinds of bats. Once we ran out of food in northern Peru, and we ate whatever we could get our hands on, including palm weevils. The grubs are about two inches long and maybe half an inch in diameter, and they are just wonderfully good, particularly when you鈥檙e hungry. They are somewhat like chestnuts if you eat them alive, but if you fry them they taste a bit like melted cheese.

Is there anything you鈥檝e refused to eat?

On our first trip to the Amazon we were living with an Indian group out in eastern Peru called the Cash铆n谩wa. We were invited over to a neighbour鈥檚 house for dinner that night and they鈥檇 just returned from a long hunting trip and they鈥檇 brought back some smoked monkeys. But smoking only does a partial job of curing the meat. And in order to eat what they served us you had to pick off the living maggots, which was not very pleasant. But we were obliged to at least make the effort because this was a delicacy and we were in a foreign household being offered the best. That was tough.

Why do you go to these kinds of places?

I don鈥檛 know. I鈥檓 a relatively introverted person. I like to be outside and I don鈥檛 mind being by myself or with a small group of people. But I really just like to go to places that are new and different, that most people don鈥檛 have a chance to experience. It may well stem from my childhood. My father was in the military and we moved all over the place when I was a kid, so every couple of years I had a new set of experiences. And from a scientific standpoint, I鈥檝e always been motivated by asking, 鈥淲hat鈥檚 on the other side of that hill? The habitat there may be a bit different to the one I鈥檓 in now. Is there something different in it?鈥�

Is it ever dangerous?

It can be. We worked up in the highlands of southern Peru from 1984 to 1988 at the height of the Sendero Luminoso Maoist guerrilla uprising. One night we were bounced out of bed at the point of a machine-gun. When we were working our way up through the Chalhuanca valley the Senderos were blowing up bridges that we had to cross. And then I鈥檝e had a few incidents with sinking boats. One of those happened in 1978 when the Aguaruna Jivaro, a headhunting group, scuttled our boat. They became very hostile and we had to leave the area.

What happened?

There was a lot of political turmoil in Amazonian Peru at the time and the atmosphere was very tense. The use of black magic is very common among the Aguaruna Jivaro, and we were collecting bats and rats and preserving them. Now, while we can tell them what we鈥檙e doing and why, when it comes down to it it doesn鈥檛 fit into their world view. They don鈥檛 have the foggiest understanding of what we鈥檙e doing it for. So it鈥檚 very easy for someone to start a rumour and say, 鈥淭hese people are going to take these animals away and sick them with some bad poison and then reconstitute them and send them back and you鈥檙e going to die because of it.鈥� In their world view that makes perfect sense. And that鈥檚 exactly what happened. They chased us out, and they fixed the boat so that it would scuttle once we were mid-river.

These people also have a very tight control over the way knowledge is divided in their community. Certain knowledge is collected and kept by women and certain knowledge by men. Our research team was collecting both, and that made them uneasy too. It wasn鈥檛 issues involving bioprospecting or intellectual property rights, but the way we were collecting and organising knowledge that was threatening to their society. But that鈥檚 as true in California as it is in distant parts of the Amazon. People are always suspicious of what鈥檚 unfamiliar to their world view.

That wasn鈥檛 the only time you鈥檝e had a boat sink under you鈥�

It鈥檚 happened five times in all. The first time was in 1966, when my wife and I hired a fisherman to take us across to one of the islands in the central Gulf of California for a night to trap some mice, and we got hit by one of these sudden storms that come up in the winter. The little boat foundered and we barely made it to shore. We were out there for a week, eating what our traps caught, before we were rescued. Then in 1972, after three months on the Galapagos, we were coming back to Costa Rica on a research vessel and about 200 kilometres off the Costa Rican coast the boat caught fire and sank, leaving us in a little rubber life raft. We were lucky, though. We sank right in the middle of the shipping lanes coming out of the Panama Canal. We sank mid-morning and were picked up by midnight.

It was 1978 when the Aguaruna Jivaro scuttled our boat. Then in 1984 we almost sank a boat in southern Peru, down in the Alto Madre de Dios. That was one sinking every six years. So when we had this idea about buying a boat in Brazil and doing survey work on the Jurua river, we decided not to go in 1990. We went in 1991 instead. But in February 1992 the boat hit a submerged log and sank. There鈥檚 a good reason why I went to university in the desert.

Has it all been worth the risk?

You bet it鈥檚 worth it. My view of life is, 鈥測ou鈥檙e born and then you die. You鈥檙e going to die sooner or later anyway, so you might as well enjoy doing what you do.鈥� So I鈥檝e never given a second thought to the danger of being out under those kind of circumstances, no matter what the experience has been. And if I have another opportunity to go to a remote part of the world and I can still physically do it, I鈥檒l be the first one on the plane.

Where would you like to go?

The two areas I鈥檇 really like to get to are parts of Madagascar and parts of New Guinea. I might avoid Iraq and Afghanistan right now, but if I thought I could go there, trap my rats and not bother anybody else, I鈥檇 probably go.

What do you see as your most important scientific achievement?

Science Citation Index once wrote to me to say one of my papers had reached 鈥渃lassic鈥� status. But it was a paper about methods and it was just a case of being in the right place at the right time. The biggest thing I鈥檝e been involved with is something we鈥檝e just published on the genetics of Amazonian rodents, where we found that most speciation occurred in the early or pre-Pleistocene. This could have a great impact on a whole range of things including management and conservation efforts in Amazonia.

And your biggest achievement in life?

That I鈥檓 still alive and still having fun trapping rats around the world. I鈥檝e done what I鈥檝e done mostly because I鈥檝e simply enjoyed doing it.