Kaya Lawes suggests the rat as a significant Anthropocene presence, transforming ecosystems wherever human colonisation has introduced them, taking the blame for the spread of plague and reflecting the challenges of unplanned urbanisation. Rats also demonstrate our attempts to understand the consequences of our actions, from toxicology studies to neuroscience.
Museum of the Anthropocene: The Rat
Rats are an unsightly pest that most do not want to even acknowledge, and yet rats in the Anthropocene are significant, highlighting the complexities of human-environment interactions. Rats are symbolic of adaptation, and they thrive in environments that have been heavily altered by human actions.
Rats were an unacknowledged counterpart to human colonisers. Both travelled the world aboard European colonial ships, both rats and colonisers brought death and disease to the new shores they reached. But it’s largely rats that have since become the villainised and hated ones. Rats were spread to every corner of the world during the period of European colonial expansion. Wherever rats have been introduced, they have, in most cases, transformed local ecosystems. This redistribution and reorganisation of life has become a powerful symbol of the Anthropocene, whereby human mobility often becomes a process of multi-species invasion1.
Rats are infamous for their role in spreading diseases. Today, they are known to be responsible for spreading diseases such as hantavirus and leptospirosis. The bubonic plague, which killed millions, has long been associated with travelling rats. Recent studies nonetheless show that rats were not the main carrier of the fleas and lice which were responsible for the plague, it was humans. But the role that rats were perceived to have in the spreading of the plague has led to rats being villainised and seen as a sign of unsanitary conditions, particularly in towns and cities.
Throughout the Anthropocene, rats have reflected the challenges of unplanned urbanisation. The rapid expansion of cities in the 18th and 19th centuries created new habitats that rats thrived in due to their resilient and adaptive nature. Rats had a steady food source due to the poor sanitation and poor waste management in growing cities. This allowed rat populations to boom alongside urban populations, and particularly alongside the urban poor.
Rats are often found in poorer communities, reflecting broader societal issues such as environmental justice and the uneven distribution of resources and services that define the unequal contours of the Anthropocene. Marginalised communities are usually the first and most affected by pollution, disease, and lack of sanitation infrastructure, making rats a proficient marker of social and environmental inequalities. This association of rats and marginalised communities is perhaps also reflected in the use of ‘rat’ as an insult; for a human to be labelled a ‘rat’ is to cast that person as the lowest of the low, or even to cast them outside ‘society’ altogether.
Despite this almost universal derision, rats have a dual identity of despised pests and beloved pets. In the right environment, rats have been shown to demonstrate human curiosity, while lab rats are invaluable to scientific research. Lab rats in the Anthropocene demonstrate humanity’s attempts to understand the biological consequences of our actions, from toxicology studies to neuroscience. Within laboratories, rats are subject to various forms of exploitation, but also to complex and sincere forms of care. The complex place of rats in human society reflects broader human relationships with nature in the Anthropocene, which can be both exploitative and appreciative.
Throughout the Anthropocene, rats have been villainised for reflecting faults in human societies. Understanding human relationships with rats throughout the Anthropocene can tell us a lot about not only about process of environmental change, but about our shifting and sometimes contradictory attitudes to the nonhuman world as well.
Notes
The rat was contributed by Kaya Lawes.
Kaya says: “As an Environmental Science student, I took a module called Human Geographies in the Anthropocene, which challenged me to explore how human-environment relationships are shaped by power, history, and inequality. This led me to examine the rat as an Anthropocene object — an animal often vilified yet deeply entwined with colonial expansion, urbanisation, and social inequalities. What began as a curiosity about why rats evoke such strong reactions became an exploration of how they symbolise the uneven impacts of environmental change and the complex, often contradictory ways we relate to the nonhuman world.”
- The rat images were found during Kaya’s research using the following sources:
- Top left: Wilkie, S., 2014. Scots ‘super rats’ are immune to poison.
- Top right: Bradford, A., 2023. Rats: facts about these thin-tailed, medium-sized rodents.
- Bottom left: Mask force: London’s five centuries of face coverings. BBC News, 2021.
- Centre: Luske, H., Geronimi, C., & Jackson, W. (1955). Rat scene from ‘Lady and the Tramp’ Walt Disney Productions, Buena Vista Film Distribution.
- Bottom right: Schipani, S., 2019. The history of the lab rats is full of scientific and ethical quandaries.
- Invasion is discussed in Feral Atlas as an example of one of the ‘detonators‘ of the Anthropocene.
Very interesting Kaya although I cannot empathise with the creatures as you seem to do!