Infectious diseases have affected more than just how people have died over the centuries. They have contributed to the development of our culture, language and behaviours. This is especially true of our interactions and relationships with animals. One animal with which we’ve had an uneasy relationship with is the rat. Society has associated rats with disease even before we recognised their role as disease carriers or vectors.

But recently, the rat has begun to come out of the shadows. In the UK, we’ve begun to welcome domesticated rats into our homes as pets. The Pet Food Manufacturers Association estimated that there were 200,000 pet rats in the UK in 2012. That makes them as popular as tortoises and twice as numerous as gerbils and horses. However, while many people have given a rat a home they would probably not be as enthusiastic about an uninvited wild rat moving in. So what is it that makes us distinguish between domestic and wild rats, with one being considered a friend and the other an undesirable?

Here to talk about society’s attitudes to rats and the implications for infectious disease transmission is Charlotte Robins. Charlotte is a final year PhD student at IGH. She recently published a paper entitled “Pets, Purity and Pollution: Why Conventional Models of Disease Transmission Do Not Work for Pet Rat Owners” in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29215554).