2023-09-23 19:03:00
“We will never have a city without rats. We must learn to live with them”
It is indeed the sewer rat or rattus norvegicus that Thomas Jean is talking regarding. His “glamorous” photographs of Brussels representatives of this species of “brown rat” are currently exhibited in the “temporary art gallery” of the Brussels Sewer Museum – a corridor with a mesh floor which is in fact the collector of the roadway of Mons! – as part of the Rattus exhibition.
A rat in Brussels, next to a scooter wheel, photographed by Thomas Jean. ©Thomas Jean/The Wild Minute
The objective of the event, according to curator Aude Hendrick: to show that this “pest”, very present in the Brussels sewers, is an animal “like the others”, victims of many preconceived ideas. Dirty ? He actually washes up to seven times a day. The rat eats garbage? In reality, he doesn’t eat just anything but sorts and is very gourmet. Carrier of the plague? This does not concern the brown rat but the black rat (rattus rattus), which is no longer present in our country and only the fleas carried the famous yersinia pestis bacteria. Vector of diseases, still today? This needs to be qualified because the risk of contamination to humans is in fact very low and the risk of causing epidemics is absent. Are they swarming in the big capitals? Very often there is no valid figure, including in Brussels.
“On a social level, it is a remarkable animal”
“We must rehabilitate the rat,” says French geneticist Aude Lalis (French National Museum of Natural History), a specialist in this rodent and who contributed to the exhibition. Rather than talking regarding what the rat is not, I prefer to talk regarding what the rat is. It is above all an animal which is extraordinary in its great strength of adaptation; to our cities, to our lifestyles. On a social level, it is a remarkable animal. We should model ourselves following him, in fact! The rat lives on very little. It needs a little land, a little discreet corner, a small source of food, a little water. And then his family life. They are very supportive, very close, they live in truly united family clans… The little ones are protected; when a rat gets caught in a trap, the others are around for example, and we see them communicating: they rub each other… “
“Tord-Boyaux” rat poison advertisement, wood engraving, 19th century, presented as part of the Rattus exhibition. © Wellcome Collection.
“Rats and probably most animals are sensitive living creatures that, just like us, sense and experience pain,” adds Kristof Baert, veterinarian at the Flemish Institute for Nature and Forest Research (Inbo). We cannot ignore it when we talk regarding rat control. In some situations and circumstances we might simply consider them part of the environment and ecosystem. As long as they don’t cause any problems, we might consider them part of nature, just like us.”
Hated all over the world
But the rat suffers from a bad reputation and is considered one of the main unwanted animals in large cities throughout the world, from Brazil to Australia via Western Europe, notes the geographer. Swiss Joëlle Salomon Cavin, author of Undesirables, the unloved animals of the city (Editions 41). “Apart from being a vector of disease and this false idea regarding the plague, I believe that the rat also suffers from its appearance, its tail in particular. An exhibition on rats at the Neuchâtel museum in Switzerland showed that, ultimately, if the rat had a squirrel tail, we would find it super cute! But there is this tail which is practically the same size as him… The rat also suffers from his behavior; it feeds on waste – so it is associated with dirt – and it likes dark corners. The rat is also feared and unloved when it leaves the place where it has been confined: in the sewers. We don’t like it when it’s visible and that’s where it’s a problem. But ultimately, if you don’t see it, no worries. Cities fear rats coming out!”
”The rat escapes all boxes: neither a wild animal, nor a domestic animal that we raise to consume it, nor an animal that we bring into our home to pamper it. He has a special place. In fact, as we did not know where to place it, what suited the company was ultimately to put it in the sewers, adds Aude Lalis. The rat is also a symbolic animal to which we attribute all our faults. It is said to be stingy, petty, timid because it flees first. We project onto him everything we don’t like regarding ourselves. Which is unfair because it really goes once morest biological facts…”
Campaign of the Paris Animaux Zoopolis association (2018). ©DR
In Paris, the PAZ association is campaigning to rehabilitate the image of the rat and “stop the massacre of rats”, “the most hated and killed of the liminal animals, these animals which live freely in urban space”. While at the Paris City Council, an elected representative from the Animalist Party asked that they be called “surmice” (in fact one of the technical names for the brown rat or rattus norvegicus) because “rat” was derogatory. A discourse that remains extreme, notes Joëlle Salomon Cavin, who rather sees through her research “an ecologization of practices” emerging. “What we see emerging is an integrated concept of the regulation of the species: not having to kill it but rather limit its proliferation and in particular the proliferation in spaces where we do not want to see it, that is, in public spaces. This integrated fight includes, among other things, the behavior of city dwellers.”
The Rattus exhibition runs until June 16, 2024 and is accompanied by a thematic year. Every third Sunday of the month, the museum offers families a day of activities to better know and understand the rat. Visits to discover rats, pigeons and mice in town are also planned in the company of Thomas Jean. On February 23, a round table on the sustainable management of rats in the city will bring together a panel of Belgian and international experts.
Infos : museedesegouts.brussels
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