Top Ten Hated (But Misunderstood) Animals – 2 – The Brown Rat (Rattus norvegicus)

The brown rat (rattus norvegicus) is a beautiful, cute and highly successful creature that has not only become a companion of humans across the world but helps us dispose of our rubbish by eating it, helps maintain our sewers by keeping them clean and clear for their own purposes and has sacrificed uncountable members of its species to further our scientific curiosity.

Yet they are universally hated as a disease-spreading pest, a destroyer of crops, a horrid and beastly home invader and – it’s bollocks. It’s mostly lies, unfounded myth.

This is my rat redemption. It’s time we change the way we think about rats and learn to live alongside them. If for nothing else than the noble sacrifices they have become in our medical services industry.

Top Ten Hated (But Misunderstood) Animals – 6- The Aye-Aye (Daubentonia madagascarensis)

Nearly half-way through this list and I want to come clean. This started as a conversation about my love for certain ‘undesirables’ – They’re coming up later, but if I asked you to guess the top few hated but misunderstood animals they’d be on your mind. What I didn’t expect was for my research toContinue reading “Top Ten Hated (But Misunderstood) Animals – 6- The Aye-Aye (Daubentonia madagascarensis)”

Top Ten Hated (But Misunderstood) Animals: 8 – Wolf (Canis lupus)

It started out as a rehabilitation piece on wolves and ended up with me being a full blown wolf fantatic and begging for their reintroduction to the UK. Wolves are a fascinating species with an undeserved reputation for cruelty and violence. A smart, shy and social group of species, with a remarkable story written in their genome of migrations, troubles, bottlenecks and redistributions. I have developed a new-found love and respect for them in writing this article and, if you are wolf sceptic, I hope it will give you some new perspective, too.