IV.—RAT SOCIETY, CANNIBALISM, AND FRIENDSHIP.
Animals of nearly all kinds are fond of each other's society, and in their natural wild state are always found in herds. The city rats live in tribes or colonies of from twenty-five to sixty individuals, in the winter more and in the summer less. In the cold weather, when they are idle or at rest, they lie in one heap for the purpose of mutually heating each other. They change from the bottom to the top and alternate their positions very frequently, so as to give each one an opportunity to enjoy the warmer place at the bottom. The warmer the locality the less individuals there are in a heap. These rats live peacefully enough amongst themselves when they have enough to eat, but the minute they are apprised of a slightly vacant feeling in the region of the stomach they become the most savage of animals.
The mother rat is very careful and fussy about her young until they get to a certain age. When they have passed this period, however, and the mother should, on some bright day, feel a trifle hungry, she would as readily devour her offspring as the children would make a meal of her, thus returning the compliment neatly. Individual cases of this kind occur also amongst the canine family, where dog-bitches have dined royally on a majority of their newly born pups. This tends to show that man is not the only intelligent animal who occasionally uses his fellow's carcass for fodder. Cannibalism, in the rat's case, takes place generally when they are unable to get any other diet, but then they will devour one another with gusto, skin, tail, bones, feathers, and all; the stronger killing the weaker and sucking the blood first. Hot blood is one of their greatest delicacies. The rats are born blind and naked, and their bodies are at this time of their life in a wobbly and unformed state. In this condition they would probably not be looked on by outsiders as things of beauty or delicate morsels, yet they are eagerly sought after by the old male rat to furnish him with his Sunday dinner dessert. The male pigs, cats, ferrets, and rabbits also indulge in the same pastime. This is made still more of a highly prized food for the old man rat by its rarity, as the mother will fight to protect her young with the boldness and savageness of a lioness defending her cubs. She will even go to the pathetic extent of chewing up her young ones herself rather than let them fall into the hands of her oppressor. The rats have an arrangement amongst them similar to the old Greek health law of killing off all sickly infants, that is, they eat their dead and infirm. This accounts for the fact that rats are never found at large sick, diseased, or disabled. Although, as a rule, it isn't considered the correct thing with us to dine or breakfast from our departed fathers-in-law or uncles, yet in the present case, peculiar as it may seem, it is the only admirable trait about the rat. It forms a safeguard to man against their increase, yet we must add, in a hurry, that the check put upon their growth by their cannibalism is lamentably small when compared to their enormous multiplying powers, which surpass those of any other animal.
The writer had a curious experience in regard to the rat's sociability and companionship. He had once confined in a cage a company of twelve big slaughter-house rats and happened to neglect feeding them one evening. The next morning he was rather astonished to find a well polished backbone, a stubby remnant of tail, and only eleven other rats, all huddled up together compactly, in the congregation. He then gave them some food to stop them from further feeding on each other, but they rudely refused this, and he was again surprised to see ten of the number make a combined attack, that looked as if agreed upon, upon one unfortunate but especially large sized rat. The latter tried desperately enough to hold his own against such fearful odds, with much horrible squealing and screaming among them and a great deal of severe scratching, dashing, and tumbling against the tin-lined sides and the wire roofing of the cage. In a few seconds they were ranged all around in a circle feeding ravenously on the remains of the brave but ill-fated warrior. The writer has noticed, in numerous instances where numbers of rats were kept together in a cage, that they would on some occasions, just as the humor seemed to strike them, prefer their relatives and brethren as food to anything else. It did not matter, either, what other form of diet or delicacy had been set before them.