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In Defense of the Rat
Rats are less pestilent and more lovable than we think. Can we learn to live with them?
In the centuries between, a killer pig was dressed in human clothing and hanged in Falaise, France; Marseille put dolphins on trial for crimes unknown; and a rooster—in what must have been a case of mistaken identity—was burned at the stake in Basel, Switzerland, for the witchery of laying an egg while male. In 2021, two researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina reviewed the numerous studies on empathy in rats and concluded that refusal to recognize the rodents’ empathic abilities now amounted to “anthropodenial.” The term was coined by primatologist Frans de Waal in 1997 to refer to a stubborn tendency to dismiss humanlike characteristics in animals, no matter how convincing the evidence. Other laboratory experiments have shown that rats can solve complex puzzles, recognize cause-and-effect relationships, feel regret, make judgments based on perception, and understand time, space, and numbers.
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