An
unbiased observer from another planet reflecting on human behavior from a perch
close enough to capture the broad strokes of human conduct, but far enough away
not to sweat the details of our separate behaviors would conclude that we are
rats. Konrad Lorenz, the Austrian
co-founder of classical ethology (the evolutionary study of animal behavior),
concluded this in his classic 1966 account of aggression in animals including
humans called On Aggression. The extraterrestrial would surmise this based
upon the observations that both rats and humans are “social and peaceful beings
within their clans, but veritable devils towards all fellow-members of their
species not belonging to their own communities.”[1] Our
Martian would have more optimism about the future of rats than humans, says
Lorenz, since rats stop reproducing when a state-of overcrowding is reached. We do not.
The
comparison of rats to humans is a provocation, one assumes. Presumably the unflattering parallel was
contrived to collar us and press us into remedial action on those aspects of our social behavior considered by Lorenz to be malfunctioning. At the
same time, objective scientist as Lorenz saw himself as being, there had to be
something more than invidious comparison at work in the twinning of rat and
man. There must be some ethological meat
on these insalubrious bones. Brown rats,
like men, rely on the transmission of experience to other members of the
community. That is, rats learn, rats
have culture. Additionally, and most
significantly rats, oftentimes models of cordiality towards their neighbors can
“change into horrible brutes as soon as the encounter members of any other
society of their own species”.[2] On
these counts – rats as startling comparison, rats as cultured, rats as murderers – rats can stand in for humans in speculations about nationalism,
war, and other dangerous aspects of human behavior. Rats have the additional advantage of not
directly objecting to being experimented upon.
