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Rat- ionalise Opinions About Muroids

 


Clearly rats have got a bad deal both in popular imagination and the English language. While its cutar, relative the mouse, has been elevated to a technoc-rat thanks to the advent of the computer, a rat rarely gets any grattitude; instead it is usually regarded as vermin. Praise, if any, is gratituous. So it I very heartening indeed to note that a colossus if the species, an African giant pouched rat, 6-year-old Magawa, has been awarded a gold medal by the UK veterinary charity PDSA for his four year stint detecting 39 hidden landmines and 28 pieces of unexploded ordnance in Cambodia. While Magawa himself is reportedly happy to be rewarded with just basket of bananas, what makes the gold medal particularly gratifying, of course he is the only rat to be selected by PDSA- all previous 29 winners have been dogs.

The award is a significant recognition for rat kind given the bad press that Magawa's smaller cousins attract. Even now studies and irate stories abound about rats taking over city streets from Toronto to Tokyo since the start of the pandemic. Hero Rats may sound oxymornic but that's what Magawa and his mates are called by the Tanzania-based NGO named APOPO that has been training rats to detect landmines and tuberculosis for decades.Given their admirable work, it is time the world rat-ionalises its opinions about them.

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