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Given that all city dwellers know they’re never more than a few feet away from a rat, it’s perhaps surprising how shocked we are when we actually see one. I don’t know about you but the mere shadow of a rat scuttling across my peripheral vision sends a distinctive cold chill down my spine and invariably stops me in my tracks. I always need a reset when I see one, which isn’t true of, say, a fox or a city squirrel.
Does this visceral reaction really make sense? And if it doesn’t, are we humans perhaps the ones who need to rethink our position? There’s a wealth of science to show that rats are OK guys. They live socially complex lives and have friends beyond their immediate family. They are capable of imagination (can you say that of a pigeon?) and display kindness towards other rats for no reason.
Researchers are therefore perhaps right to suggest that obliterating our urban neighbours with poison, traps and general violence is a course of action that puts us in a bad light. An interesting project going on in Finland is trying to identify how our two species might live in harmony instead of hatred.
In a polarised age, we also need help living in harmony with our kin, too. Spending time with family at Christmas can mean clenching your fists under the dinner table while your distant cousin mansplains dubiously cited political “facts”. If you’re one of the many people soon to spend the festive season in the company of relatives who don’t quite see the world the same way you do, we’ve produced this useful guide to talking politics with the people you love
without throwing a single roast potato at them.
Collagen drinks are all the rage in the skincare industry but results about how useful they are remain inconclusive. However, there’s stronger evidence to suggest that collagen can help with recovery from exercise and to help us build stronger bones, as we explore in this guide to the supplement du jour.
Also this week, a tribute to poet and leading Rastafarian Benjamin Zephaniah after his untimely death this week, a look at why you might want to consider a hybrid heating system, and we ask what would happen to all our dogs if humans disappeared from the face of the earth.
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