Amsterdam told to be nicer to rats

Amsterdam should become a “rat city” where humans learn to live alongside an animal that is no more dangerous than a bat or pigeon, Dutch scientists have said.

A conference at the centre for human-animal studies at Amsterdam University concluded with a call for the famously liberal city to break with centuries of prejudice against Rattus norvegicus, the brown or sewer rat.

Maite van Gerwen, an animal scientist, dismissed fears of the rat as a transmitter of disease such as bubonic plague, and urged Amsterdammers to learn to live with their neighbours.

“Where there are people, there are rats,” she told the Het Parool newspaper. “Why do we want certain animals around us and not others?”

Rats often live among filth but are fastidiously clean animals that spend much of the day grooming themselves.

Van Gerwen, who runs a consultancy, Animo Animalis, advising local governments on animal pest control and nuisance prevention, said that in terms of serious disease, rats were no more dangerous than other animals. To be at risk of infection, an individual would have to be bitten by one of the rodents or have contact with its excrement and urine.

Rats have been demonised in the ports and market streets of Europe since they were blamed for spreading the Black Death from the 14th to 19th centuries.

The Amsterdam centre’s scientists are backing a “rat city” project, with special feeding areas for them in parks.

The plan is modelled on the Karni Mata temple in the Indian state of Rajasthan, where the rat has been declared sacred and some 20,000 of the animals are cared for and venerated.