More Cunning Than Man: A Social History of Rats and Man

by Robert Hendrickson

Book Overview

This eye-opening, well-researched examination of mankind's oldest competitor is filled with weirdly fascinating information about the history of the rat and the way it consistently outsmarts man.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1575663937
• ISBN13: 9781575663937
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corporation
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 0.98 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

don't miss it !!!!

While I would have like to have seen a slightly more sympathetic view of rodentia, this book is jam-packed with incredible facts and very intriguing, well-researched and well-written.

Fascinating,yet repulsive...

The most inclusive book on this rodent I've ever read.It includes the origin and natural history of the rat,rat behaviour,mans' attempts to eradicate them,rats' links to disease,rat folklore,rats in art and literature,rats in the lab,rats as pets,rat attacks, even recipes for cooked rats(:-P).Don't think I'll be trying any of those.The book has many facts about rats I've seen nowhere else,including this : scientists were able to impregnate a female mus musculus with the semen of a Norway Rat.Attempts to cross rattus norvegicus with rattus rattus have failed. That means that the common house mouse is basically a tiny rat...or that the norway rat is a huge mouse,however you want to look at it.Of course,all this information in a book of less than 300 pages means the book reads like some rivers out west...a mile wide and only 6 inches deep.Furthermore,Mr. Hendrickson uses neither endnotes or footnotes,so if the reader wants to verify the info by consulting the original sources,s/he is SOL.This is most irritating when one is reading the horrific attacks of rats 'swarming'human victims and eating them alive.Behaviour that unusual in an animal that prefers to avoid people begs for better verification,rats being one of the animals that inspires Urban Legends.(At least one story RH repeats was identified as such by Jan Harold Brunvand;the one where two people check into a hotel room,one leaves,when she returns,the second person has vanished,and no one remembers her ...)The author does include an index and a bibliography.And while I do understand that most people would read this book for the horrific elements, I wish the role of the rat as pet had been covered better.Any rat person will tell you that a rat is friendlier than a cat,smarter than a dog,more trainable than a guinea pig or hamster,and cleaner than any of these other animal companions.For that matter,wild norway rats have been tamed and trained by any number of convicts and POWS and other,lonely people forsaken by their human brethren.I gave this book 4 stars out of 5 because I reserve 5 stars for one-in-a-million masterpieces.I took off 1/2 a star for the lack of documentation...use endnotes or footnotes, PLEASE! WARNING:THIS BOOK SHOULD NOT BE PURCHASED BY A PROSPECTIVE RAT OWNER,WITH THE IDEA THAT IF A RECALCITRANT PARENT/SPOUSE/SO READS IT,THEY'LL BECOME ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT GETTING A RAT! :-)