Follow the Pink Tail

Abstract

In the corner of my eye, I catch the dark flash that runs along the wall, the one that isn’t supposed to be here, the parasite of the urban landscape. The city at night is your playground, but you come out in the daylight too, making your presence known and claiming you belong to the city with us.

This paper uncovers the quiet, yet ever-present relationship between the rat and the human. Motivated by my irrational fear of these small-ish rodents, I researched why the rat has gained its pejorative connotation here in the West. In the following chapters I’ll examine how history and culture have shaped its identity in society, from the Black Death of the Middle Ages and animated cartoons to religious mythology and demining initiatives ultimately posing the question: Can we imagine a future of coexistence with them?

The Black Death

To understand the origin of the societally ingrained disgust and fear of rats, the most relevant point of interest lies in the Plague. Discovered through archaeological findings, the first signs of the zoonotic bacteria that caused the outbreak, Bacteria Yersinia Pestis, date back to the Late Bronze Age (-12th Century BC) in Europe and Asia. This paper will focus on the Bubonic Plague, also known as the ‘Black Death’ of the 14th Century in Europe, but it is worth keeping in mind that it also affected Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa.

The Plague is certainly not only a ‘Medieval phenomenon’.^* 1. Daisy Lafarge, Lovebug (Glasgow, Peninsula Press, 2023), 24. It has resurfaced many times throughout history and is still present today in countries such as Madagascar and Mongolia where it has seasonal resurgences. In Mongolia, the plague is carried on by Marmots and can be transmitted to humans through contact. As Daisy Lafarge describes in her book, Lovebug (2023), the illness can be treated with antibiotics if detected during its early stages. The human death rate caused by the plague is moderately low but still present, ‘(...) in Mongolia this needed to remain the case because eradicating the plague would lead to an overpopulation of marmots, whose appetite for grasses and herbs would eventually lead to the desertification of the landscape, ostensibly posing a much greater threat to human life than the currently low levels of endemic plague.’^* 2. Ibid. In Lafarge's example, we can observe that illness and disease are part of a larger ecosystem instead of an intruder or attacker that has to be eradicated. This contemporary understanding shows a different point of view and discourse surrounding infectious diseases. The role of the virus is to keep the balance in nature, and we tolerate and coexist with it.

Now going back to the Middle Ages and the Black Death. The infected flea from Central Asia made their way to Europe through the black rat. As the rat followed human migration and movements, so did the bacteria, mostly through water transportation such as passenger ships and barges. After having infected passengers and crew, the infected rats spread the plague to whatever port city the boat docked in next. People got sick by being bitten by a flea, having had contact with infected bodily fluids, or touching contaminated material. Due to these factors, the disease spread rapidly through Europe.

As described in Daniel Defoe’s book A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), the first signs of a person suffering from the plague were: ‘(...) a small swelling (a ‘bubo’ or a ‘token’) would appear somewhere on your body, then more swelling in your neck or armpit or groin, fierce headaches and vomiting, sharp pains, the swellings turning red or purple or black, and sometimes death would come so fast (...)’.^*

With no treatment or medicine, the affected person would die overnight or within 10 days. The death toll rose so fast that within five years Europe had lost almost a third of its population which sat around 50 million between 1346 and 1353. Christianity was an important part of Western society. When the plague arrived ‘Medieval Europeans turned towards the Church and its leaders in times of crises because they were in search of answers that provided a degree of order and solidity’.^* 4. Elizabeth Lehfeldt, ed. The Black Death (Problems in European Civilization) (Boston: Cengage Learning, 2004), 123. However, with time the disease massively weakened the church’s credibility, as it proved incompetent regarding the salvation of the people.

From the Plague onward the ‘relationship’ between rats and humans shifted entirely. Although the rodent played a vital role in the transportation of the plague, it wasn’t the direct transmitter of the disease. However, with little knowledge about the cause of the epidemic, people put the entirety of the blame on the rat, who was a better-suited enemy than a flea. It became, in Western culture, the ‘ultimate’ enemy, especially in cities, as it symbolized disease, death, and evil.

Infected City

Despite the significant physical and material toll of the pandemic, the structure and psyche of society were arguably the most affected. The fear of the survivors is what is passed on from such horrific times. Their stories and opinions defined the events for future generations. The discourse around infectious disease is never purely scientific or rational, nor is it necessarily even logical; political, cultural, and social contexts always shape it. With very little information, false statements, and no cure, desperate people would often end up placing blame on ‘the other’, creating a more divided and violent society. This pattern is ever-present and can be seen as recently as the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, where the pandemic ‘unleashed a tsunami of hate and xenophobia’^* 6. ‘Covid-19 Fueling Anti-Asian Racism and Xenophobia Worldwide,’ Human Rights Watch, August 16, 2022, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/12/covid-19-fueling-anti-asian-racism-and-xenophobia-worldwide. towards people of Asian descent, as China was the country where the virus was first detected.

For centuries scientists and researchers relied on the memoirs of the Italian Gabriel de’ Mussi who recorded the outbreak of the Plague in Piacenza in 1346. His narrative entails having seen ‘the Mongol army throw black-plague infected cadavers into the besieged Crimean city of Caffa’.^* 7. Mark Wheelis, ‘Biological Warfare at the 1346 Siege of Caffa,’ Emerging Infectious Diseases 8, no. 9 (September 1, 2002): 971–75, https://doi.org/10.3201/eid0809.010536. Thereby infecting the people in the city and eventually all of Europe, causing the most horrific public health disaster in recorded history. Through this narrative, the Black Death became a weapon wielded by Tatars against Italians, and one of the first instances of biological warfare. Today, it is unclear what transpired. Studies show that de’ Mussi did not witness the siege of the city of Caffa or the outbreak of the plague. However, for centuries his testament was seen as the most credible source. His story reinforced pre-existing stereotypes and preconceptions about ‘the other’, the Mongolians. It is more reassuring to play the ‘blame game’, than live in the uncertainties of the origins of disease. While today it is the rat, back then it was the Mongolian army that brought the plague to Europe’s door.

The Mongolians weren’t the only people blamed for the plague. Antisemitism had been a latent and festering issue in Europe for centuries, so when the plague broke out, it presented an opportunity for leaders to blame the Jewish people throughout Europe. They too became rats. In 1349, almost the entire Jewish population of Basel was massacred by the townspeople. Countries such as Switzerland, France, and Germany, accused the Jewish people of poisoning wells. Jews were presumably dying from the plague at a much lower rate due to better sanitation, religious hygiene practices, and their overall marginalized position within European society. Antisemitism was already present in Europe at this time, so when the pandemic broke out, Christians didn’t second guess the idea that the Jewish people had brought it. Entire Jewish communities were burnt at the stake and banished from towns all along the Rhine. Forced to convert to Christianity, tortured, or burnt alive, these gruesome events left a sore mark in Jewish history. When faced with unexplainable misfortune, society is pushed to find an individual, a group of people, or even a rodent to blame.^*

As society divided more and more, the gap between the rich and poor was only widening. This brought on a rise of opportunism and exploitation by people trying to make a profit. ‘Fake fortune tellers, cunning men, and astrologers (...)’^* 10. Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year (New York, Dover Publications, 2001), 20. whose sole goal was to make money told lies about the near end of the epidemic, and even sold fake cures and potions. ‘They behaved like rats!’, that is what one might say today, keeping in mind the symbolism that the rodent holds.

This pattern was repeated with the onset of the Covid 19 pandemic in 2020 when the virus highlighted socio-political tensions, for instance between the US and China. Covid 19 is a human disease but has zoonotic origins just like the plague. This time the carrier was bats. The first cases of coronavirus were detected in Wuhan, China in December 2019.^* 11. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, World Health Organization, February 17, 2025, https://www.who.int/europe/emergencies/situations/covid-19 From that moment it quickly spread to the rest of the world and became a global pandemic in March. The outbreak triggered a wave of anti-Chinese rhetoric pronounced by government leaders such as US President Donald Trump using the term ‘Chinese virus’. These insinuations and inflammatory statements (which happened all over the world), directly or indirectly encouraged acts of violence, racism, and xenophobia against Asian people. By using a militarized discourse, it only reinforced the ‘us vs them’ narrative, decontextualizing the actual sickness and using it for political agenda. ‘By late April, a coalition of Asian-American groups that had created a reporting center called STOP AAPI HATE said it had received almost 1,500 reports of incidents of racism, hate speech, discrimination, and physical attacks against Asians and Asian-Americans.’^*

As Daisy Lafarge describes in her book Lovebug (2023), militarized metaphor in the context of sickness is still used as the dominant political discourse of ‘an evil that intrudes on and infects the good’.^* 13. Daisy Lafarge, Lovebug (Glasgow, Peninsula Press, 2023), 16. This again is breaching a gap between the sick and the healthy, the invader and the invaded, the good and the evil, which is a pre-dated way of looking at disease. This metaphor is used by politicians, spreading fear and often leading to racism and other types of societal rejection. Lafarge gives the example of UK prime minister Boris Johnson describing the new outbreak of coronavirus in 2020 as ‘an invisible mugger that had to be wrestled to the floor’. In her book: Illness as Metaphor (1978), Susan Sontag challenges the language used regarding illness and the mystification surrounding it. When illness is seen as evil or the ultimate enemy, there is a strong separation between the infected, who feel alienated, and their ‘healthy’ surroundings. She continues by saying: ‘Illnesses have always been used as metaphors to enliven charges that a society was corrupt or unjust’.^* 14. Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978), 72. Through her text, Sontag urges us to change our view concerning disease, to not fall for the pattern of metaphorical thinking as it only leads to a misconception of reality. In the end, it’s the metaphor, not the illness itself that kills and divides society.

Whether it is Jewish people, Asian people, or the rats there will always be a scapegoat for people’s fear. The psychological result of the plague of the Middle Ages has shaped how we see the rat today, and will likely shape it for centuries to come. The rat became the metaphor and embodiment of evil in European society, the harbinger of death and all things to be feared. Our proneness of linking the Plague to the rat, speaks of our human tendency to blame an ‘other’ for unexplainable events and to feed into the ‘us vs them’ discourse.

Evil Character

I don’t know where my fear of rats came from or when it started. But I do remember very vividly being traumatized by the sight of rats in cartoons as a child. Two times in particular; the rat in Disney’s Lady and the Tramp (1955), which I have never watched again, and the rats in Ratatouille (2007), who ironically enough were protagonists fighting against human prejudices against rats. However, as a child, I recall being completely terrorized watching Ratatouille when it came out in 2007. Specifically the beginning scene, with the collapsing ceiling with all the rats and the grandma.

My mom and I were asked to leave the cinema because I couldn’t stop screaming. It took me years before I could watch it again and finish it. Today, I can quite enjoy it. This chapter focuses on the representation of rats in movies and other media, examining the human tendency to project human behavior and human character traits onto ‘wild’ animals. As John Berger writes in his text, Why Look at Animals? (2009) animated and drawn animals, ‘having no physical needs or limitations as pets do, [...] can be totally transformed into human puppets.’^* 15. John Berger, Why Look at Animals (London, Penguin, 2009), 25 The now anthropomorphic animal abandons its natural state and transforms into a spectacle. Animal characters in Disney and earlier in the illustrations and stories of Beatrix Potter show human/social situations projected on the Animal Kingdom. This can also be seen in the earlier drawings of Grandville, for The Fables of La Fontaine (1668), where the animal is used in ‘people situations’ as entertainment but also to showcase (expose) the moeurs and vices of society.

Although I enjoyed the stories immensely and consumed a lot of them as a child, I believe they also played a huge role in vilifying certain animals, such as rats. In Beatrix Potter’s animation, The Tale of Samuel Whiskers or The Roly-Poly Pudding (1908) for example, a kitten gets kidnapped by Rats who want to make him into pudding for dinner. Furthermore, in Disney’s classic movie Lady and the Tramp (1955), a rat tries to attack a newborn human baby. These representations did not help the rat’s image in my young mind. Furthermore, in Fantastic Mr. Fox (2010) by Wes Anderson, Rat is the enemy that the protagonist, Mr. Fox has to fight to the death. Rat looks devilish with his red eyes, smokes cigarettes, and has a knife. In the classical ballet, The Nutcracker (1892) by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the protagonist Clara befriends a Nutcracker who comes to life on Christmas Eve and battles against a Rat King with seven heads.

These animals are in cartoons and stories that are all fictional, subconsciously they formed and influenced the moral identity of their real-life counterparts, either good or bad, which is far from the nuanced reality of nature. I remember having to constantly remind myself there is no evil or good in the ‘Animal Kingdom’.

In his book, Ways Of Being (2022), James Bridle describes the invasion of rats in the village of Autun in Burgundy in 1522, who ‘devoured stores of barley’ and ‘terrorized the village maidens’.^* 17. James Bridle, Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence (New York, Picador, 2023), 252. These rats were then summoned to court to appeal for their crimes. However, after not showing up multiple times because they were ‘scared of the local cat’, the judge issued an order forcing the rats to disappear from the fields within six days or face extermination and eternal damnation. This case shows once more the proneness of vilifying or projecting ‘inhuman evil’ onto animals. In those times animal rights were similar to the ones of humans and belonged to a political community in which they had moral and societal responsibilities. The rat in its historical record of spreading disease, stealing, and more, was seen as a ‘criminal’.

In his philosophy of: ‘the more than human world’, American ecologist and philosopher David Abraham, ‘refers to a way of thinking which seeks to override our human tendency to separate ourselves from the natural world’.^* 18. James Bridle, Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence (New York, Picador, 2023), 17. Even within environmentalism (the concerns for environmental protection, particularly from the harmful effects of human activity) there lies an implicit separation between the human and the non-human through the idea of preserving nature instead of co-existing with it, thereby feeding the discourse of the us vs them.

In her book, Beast of Burden (2017), Sunaura Taylor describes how she has been compared to animals in her life due to her disability. These comparisons were of course used as insults, saying she was an animal meant she was separated from other (human) people, and she was being referred to as being less than human. She continues by saying that the core of the insult in animal comparisons is a ‘discrimination against non-human animals themselves.’^* 19. Sunaura Taylor, Beast of Burden: Disability Studies and Animal Rights (New York, The New Press, 2017), 195. The one thing all these non-human animals have in common is—they are not us. Once again amplifying the notion that they are the ‘ultimate other’. Therefore these comparisons and metaphors can be used to ‘support racist ideologies and demeaning and patronizing stereotypes’.^* 20. Ibid, 196. This could be seen for instance in the rhetoric of Nazi Germany comparing Jews to rats, as they were being seen as less than human.

As we have discussed before this chapter it is not the first time that Jews and rats have taken on each other’s social marginalization. During the 14th century plague years, Jews were blamed for bringing the plague, during the 20th century’s Second World War Jews were depicted as ‘rats’. In the Nazi pseudo-documentary: Der Ewige Jude (1940), directed by Fritz Hipler (the president of the Reich Film Chamber) and with the input of German Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, Jews from the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos were shown as uncivilized and inferior-beings. They were compared to rats who carry contagion, occupy the continent, and devour valuable resources. This sort of movie’s purpose was to spread the Nazi anti-semitic discourse throughout Germany and in German-occupied countries, to portray the Jew as an evil character that had to be eliminated.^*

I was also interested in talking to a person who has or had rats as pets. I quickly realized that it wasn’t as uncommon as I thought. Many people even in my close circle have had rats and love them in general, which I found quite surprising. I interviewed my good friend Anselme Servain, a photography student at KABK about his pet rats that he had when he was around 15. This conversation gave me insight into the images we humans have projected onto the rodent.

The past and contemporary image of the rat has been largely shaped by history and culture, a continuation of their own period’s prejudices and ideas. We (humans) have given them ‘human characteristics’ untrue to their nature, such as greediness and untrustworthiness. Rats in the end, just like many other animals, just want to survive. Our tendency to project our social vices onto others only reinforces the marginalization of the animal. As we cannot see it for what it is.

Different Perspective

Thus far in our story, the point of view has been that of a Westerner, more specifically that of a European. Europeans, including myself, have the Plague in our dormant inner memory. To see the rat through a less contentious gaze, we must look to Asia, where the rat holds a different place in society. In Hinduism, rats have spiritual significance because they are believed to be the incarnation of the Goddess Karni Mata’s sons. In China, it’s the first animal of the zodiac calendar. People born in the Year of the Rat are said to be witty, intelligent, adaptable, ambitious, and resourceful. For this short chapter exploring the rat from another perspective, I would like to look at the rat in Cambodia, where my father is from.

Cambodia is one of the most densely mined countries in the world. Its undetonated bombs and hidden landmines are the vestiges of many decades of conflict. During the civil war in the 1970s and 1980s Cambodian factions such as the Khmer Rouge and the Hun Sen regime, but also American soldiers planted mines all over the country. These are forgotten and often buried in former battlefields that have been abandoned or transformed into farming fields. Mines and bombs are still an important threat to the Khmer population. There are yearly victims from landmines and other explosives, often children that run around uncleared zones, and accidentally step on one. The estimation of landmines in the country is as high as 4 to 6 million, with most located in rural areas. Since 2014 the Belgian non-governmental organization APOPO has been working closely with CMAC (Cambodian Mine Action Center) to clear landmines in Cambodia to give back productive and safe land to the community.^* 22. Training Rats To Save Lives • APOPO. (2025, February 17). APOPO - Training Animals to Rid the World of Landmines and Tuberculosis. https://apopo.org/ This project has been successfully rolled out in Siem Reap, Preah Vihear, Battambang, and Ratanakiri. They use the African giant pouched rat originally from Tanzania who has a superior sense of smell, to sniff out the TNT found in landmines beneath the earth. These rats are the size of cats but don’t weigh more than 1,5 kg, so they don’t trigger an explosion, making them uniquely suited for mine and bomb detection. Since 2016, the APOPO ‘hero’ rats have found around 500 anti-personnel mines and 350 unexploded bombs in Cambodia. These big rodents have become vital players in the ‘decontamination’ of the land.

It is important to remember the root of where our perspective comes from. The rat has a different meaning in Asia than in Europe. The human centrality we have discussed in the prior chapter is mainly speaking about the white European perspective, the one I grew up with. Although I do have South East Asian roots, this hasn’t influenced the way I see rats. In Cambodia, the rat is not marked by the evil character metaphor it is a symbol of healing and decolonizing of the land.

Right to the City

It would be ignorant to think that cities only ‘belong’ to humans, or are only inhabited by them. Of course, millions of pets share homes and spaces with us. As John Berger describes in the book Why Look at Animals? (2009), there are many millions of pets, especially in the cities of the richest countries. These are the animals that we intentionally and willingly choose to share the space with. However, apart from the domesticated animal, the current man-made architecture and in-between spaces allow the untamed species a comfortable habitat.^* 23. Christian Hiller, Alex Nehmer, Anh Linh Ngo, Peter Spillman, Cohabitation: Ein Manifest für Solidarität von Tieren und Menschen im Stadtraum (Berlin, Arch+ Verlag GmbH, 2022), 4. The Umwelt (‘environment’) as German biologist Jakob von Uexküll describes is ‘the particular perspective of a particular organism: its internal model of the world, composed by its knowledge and perceptions.’^* 24. Jakob von Uexküll, Jakob von Uexküll: The Concept of Umwelt and its Potentials for an Anthropology Beyond the Human, 2019 Ethnos, 86(1), 132–152. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2019.1606841 Rats (city rats) and humans in a way share very similar Umwelts, however, we experience them in a very different way.

We could even argue that rats are the true residents as they can go in every crevice imaginable. The relationship rats have with man-made architecture is much stronger than the one we have with it, as they interact with buildings and urban landscapes in their entirety. Looking at a city’s history through rats reveals hidden architecture that has been forgotten by humans but explored by rodents that can go anywhere they wish. The biggest outcast knows best the cities we inhabit.

To shift our view and discourse regarding rats and other non-human beings we must first acknowledge their existence. In his book Ways of Being (2022), James Bridle pushes us to ‘Rethink and imagine our relationship to nature: by first acknowledging its existence and agency. ‘Part of that relationship is simply care: a constant attentiveness to the meaning and affect of our entanglement’’.^* 25. James Bridle, Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence (New York, Picador, 2023), 19. To do so we humans must detach ourselves from the idea that we are at the center of everything and subsequently give up human supremacism over all non-human beings, ‘imagine nature as our partner, co-conspirator, our comrade and guide’.^*

As discussed throughout this text, rats and humans have always lived in very close proximity to each other. We are also very similar to each other. In the magazine: VOLUME 66, The guide to designing with animals, plants and other critters, Kathy High explains that the reason we use them so much for medical purposes and laboratory testing is due to their metabolism being very close to that of humans. Apart from their physiognomy, they are also similar in their habits and ways of being. They are often a direct reflection/reaction to human action. The urban rat population increased largely due to climate change and population density in cities. Since the last few years rat numbers have increased in almost every city. National Geographics claims that Amsterdam is one of the cities that has seen one of the highest increases in rat population, ‘there’s at least one rat per Amsterdammer’.^* 27. De Bondt, H., De Wilde, M., & Jaffe, R., Rats claiming rights? More‐than‐human acts of denizenship in Amsterdam. PoLAR Political and Legal Anthropology Review (2023), 46(1), 67–81. https://doi.org/10.1111/plar.12530 The city’s population density, sewage systems, and architecture make it easy for rats to move freely and go in and out of homes.

This has become a growing problem for the inhabitants of the city as they ‘shape the urban landscape and interact with the built environment: their tunneling behavior damages sidewalks, sewage pipes, and the foundations of houses; they gnaw through electricity wires to grind down their teeth; and scatter trash as they rummage for food in public garbage cans.’^* 28. Ibid. These actions are a clear manifestation of their ‘right to the city’, but also of ‘more-than-human acts of denizenship’.

In the book, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (2011), Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka categorize animals into three groups: domesticated, wild, and liminal animals, each having different rights and responsibilities based on their relations with humans. Liminal animals are undomesticated animals that still live among or near humans. Rats fall into this category, and as such can be seen as denizens. ‘Denizenship, here is ‘a status that recognizes that (liminal animals) are coresidents of our urban spaces, but that they are neither capable of, nor interested in being recruited into our cooperative scheme of citizenship’’.^* 29. Donaldson, S., & Kymlicka, W. (2011). Zoopolis: A political theory of animal rights. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BB08148684 These would then be accorded three main rights: secure residency or the right to belong, a fair balancing of risks and benefits between rats and humans, and anti-stigma which would entail for instance education on the possibilities of coexistence.

However, because of the growing number of brown rats visible especially during the day in Amsterdam, actions have been taken to deal with the situation. The GGD (2021) has been stressing that there is a strong connection between rats and garbage, trying to encourage residents to play a role in rodent management by having more responsibility in garbage-related matters. For instance by ‘minimizing food waste and keeping it inside rather than outside next to the underground containers’.^* 30. De Bondt, H., De Wilde, M., & Jaffe, R., Rats claiming rights? More‐than‐human acts of denizenship in Amsterdam. PoLAR Political and Legal Anthropology Review (2023), 46(1), 67–81. https://doi.org/10.1111/plar.12530 So instead of launching impossible extermination plans the city has focused on slowing down/discouraging rat population growth through daily communal human actions. The Dutch national health authorities have changed their approach from pest eradication to integrated pest management (IPM). The scarcity of food will minimize the reproduction of rats as it is largely dependent on that.

Some people don’t mind rats and see them as part of the city. The rodent does play a role in cleaning, eating leftovers and trash, as well as the fat that usually clogs the sewage system. However, this recognition or right of belonging is related to their visibility. Seeing a rat out of the corner of your eye at night near the trash is not as unsettling as seeing them in broad daylight in the park. Rats are considered underground animals that are hidden from us, and human-rat encounters are usually brief and accidental. They live in a parallel world that preferably doesn’t overlap with ours, although we are well aware of each other’s presence. Their actions need to stay unnoticed and somehow serve human interest for us to tolerate them. But as the rat population grows so is their visibility. Their now unavoidable presence asks ‘Us’ to adapt, recognize that the rat belongs to the city just as much as humans do, and educate ourselves on coexisting with them instead of declaring war and drawing borders.

Conclusion

The relationship between the human and the rat has been tumultuous throughout history. We could confidently argue that they are the ‘true’ companion of humans as they have followed us closely, migrating to and inhabiting the same places we have. The image of the rat varies widely depending on culture and social circumstances, however the prominent connotation is mostly negative. In Europe, where the dominant, institutionalized perspective has been deeply anthropocentric and colonial, the rat has for centuries been an unwelcome parasite, the ultimate ‘other’, the enemy we should combat. But times have changed. As more diverse perspectives come into focus on topics of social and environmental sustainability, it’s clear that our collective future relies on a shift in Europe’s perspective- from one that is self-centered to one that is holistic, complex, and nuanced. The rat colonies are only here because we are; Our agricultural and industrial revolutions pushed them out of their homes and our careless waste lured them to our cities. Their populations will only grow as climate change gets more drastic and our dwellings get denser. Our shared spaces and circumstances, as well as humanity’s heavy hand in shaping them, demand a radical re-imagining of our relationship. A mutually beneficial coexistence between humans and rats starts with the way we see them. An anthropocentric outlook is what has jeopardized our future, so it is our responsibility to see from a different perspective.