Us and Them and Them and Us.
Rats are intelligent and sociable animals that have lived with humans throughout history and which have many similarities with us. Why is it then that the mere mention of the word "rat" sends shudders of horror through us?
Rats daily eat a lot of the food we produce for ourselves in both the developed and undeveloped world. And they still infect us with horrible and sometimes fatal diseases. Of these, the bubonic plague is the most famous and still the most threatening, but it is now being joined by new ones. Yet we still keep them as pets and use them as laboratory animals to learn about ourselves and the way we behave. We have to admit to the similarities between our two species.
This book is full of anecdotes of rat behaviour, some of which will make the flesh crawl, others that are very sympathetic to rats. It is the story of how rats and humans have lived together and interacted throughout the ages.
