All animal lovers are aware of the empathy which transcends the barriers of species, but they generally concern large creatures — from dogs and cats to horses, lions, tigers and gorillas. Cooperative endeavour between the animals themselves is rare — probably because that cannot always be observed in the wild — although the familial instincts of elephants, and especially the bond between mother and child, are well known.
Rats come rather lower down in the matter of arousing human interest because of their rather ferocious looks — which were used to frightening effect in George Orwell’s classic, 1984 — and because they scamper about too quickly to be petted. However, that their ferocity and cunning may be a conjecture of unsympathetic humans can be gauged from a recent experiment which showed how a rat could help a fellow rat to escape from a cage. Moreover, it did so without the lure of promised meals, which are used by experimenters to teach them tricks.
In the experiment, conducted at the Chicago university, two rats were placed in a “test area” where one could move about freely while the other was in a tube whose doors could only be nudged open from outside. As soon as the free rat realised that the other one was trapped, it immediately came to its rescue.
Yet, Indians are unlikely to be surprised by such friendly behaviour considering that there is a temple in Rajasthan, where thousands of rats roam about freely, sharing food with the visitors, and a park in central Kolkata where the rodents wait eagerly for food. Although no experiments have been held to test whether they help each other in distress, the fact that thousands of them live peacefully in cramped quarters show that they are not quite as vicious as they are portrayed.