Rats and myths to be debunked

When you see a rat in the kitchen, what is the first thing that springs to mind? Perhaps you think the kitchen needs cleaning, or you have been such a bad housewife. Rats are seen as demons, diabolical creatures that only exist to cause diseases and chaos. Maybe you are the kind of person who believes those animals shouldn’t exist in the planet you belong to. But… they exist in the same realm where we are. Actually, they are closer to us than any other animals. We have dogs close to us, even cats live on our roofs but when it comes to rats, most people don’t even want to envisage the fact that rats are all around us. Yes, we are certainly surrounded by them. We are surrounded by rats, roaches, ants but rats tend to be scarier to many due to the fact they are bigger and supposedly more dangerous.

As a norm, there are myths about all animals. Bad and malicious myths aimed at discrediting ´them for any reason. Maybe historical reasons or events associated with the animal in question. There is no doubt people can get easily misled when it comes to choosing to believe anything about an animal. In this case, people have chosen to believe according to what they have reportedly always seen.  And what have they seen about rats? They’ve seen these animals live in sewers and then they deduce hastily these animals are dirty. They’ve seen rats on cadavers and then they jump to the conclusion they only live on dead meat. And to put the lid on, they’ve also seen rats in movies, depicting them as animals which only live in the dirt, contaminating everything they touch and if you watch documentaries, you will also learn about their dark past related to the Black Death during the fourteenth century, giving rats a criminal record which appears to be worse than the one of other animals, at times, considered even worse than  the mosquitoes’ which are indeed, the most dangerous creature ever in proportion to the number of deaths caused throughout history.

The reality is that rats in general have a bad reputation. Reputation that has even handed down to their cousin, the hamster, for which the skin of some individuals crawl when they see this fluffy creature.  However, what is a fact and what is a myth in this case? Evidently, there are many things, myths and beliefs to be debunked regarding rats.

The first myth has to with how hygienic rats are. As mentioned, rats are viewed as dirty things which live in the very dirt no less. And this is truth. Rats are found in sewers and in dirty places. But does this fact mean they are filthy? To be fair, no, this is not true. In fact, they are animals which live in the dirt, but they also spend time cleaning themselves. We can say rats are finicky groomers because they are always cleaning themselves. They do this even more often than cats.

Myth 1: Rats are Dirty

Many people imagine rats as being filthy creatures that live in the sewers. Yes, some wild rats live in the sewers, but just because they live in an environment that isn't appealing to us doesn't mean that they are dirty animals. Both wild and domestic rats are fastidious groomers, and spend much of their lives cleaning themselves. In fact, a rat will spend more time a day grooming itself than a cat!

Beside this, there is a fact that you possibly ignore. Have you ever wondered where rats go when they want to relieve themselves? Well, this is a question you should ask yourself before judging. Rats actually choose their own place when it is time to go to the bathroom. And this place is necessarily away from their food. Yes, they try hard not to eat near their own excrement. This is contrary to the common belief that says that rats eat on their stool.