Hamster

What Is a
Hamster?

Imagine a friend who is soft and warm and fits in the palm of your hand. A
gentle soul, he is most content among those who respect his quiet nature, his
diminutive size, and his unique view of the world. He’s fundamentally a vegetarian
(though he might say yes to a bite of meat now and again, if it’s offered)
who demands a clean home and regular exercise, yet he tends to be a bit too susceptible
to stress. Though a homebody at heart, he can also be an inquisitive guy
with a desire to explore the world beyond his cage door. Much to his benefit, as
we will see, he also doesn’t happen to have much of a tail.
The little friend of whom we speak is, of course, the hamster. And when you
gather together all his special characteristics, you can’t help but see that there is
far more to him than meets our human eyes.


A Misunderstood Family

Many among us believe we know what hamsters are. After all, what is there to
know? They’re just those little animals that you put in a cage and keep in the
kids’ room. They’re pretty easy to take care of, and they like to run on those
wheels. Not much to it.

But if he had the voice and the language skills, the hamster would be the first
to tell us that he is far too often misunderstood—even underestimated—by the
two-legged creatures who call themselves his caretakers. He would be the first to
tell us that although living with humans is a fine fate for his kind, he would be
even more comfortable if people would take a little time to get to know him
before welcoming him into their homes. Perhaps then, even though he enjoys
immense popularity, he might earn a little more respect as well.


Answering the Question

The first step toward increasing our understanding of hamsters is to explore
their family tree. But here, too, some misunderstandings might arise. The most
logical answer to the question “What is a hamster?,” you see, also happens to be
the simplest answer. A hamster is a rodent. That’s what he is.

Uh oh.

Many a would-be hamster owner may not be all that pleased to hear that
answer. When we think rodent, we think of mice in the kitchen cupboard
munching the Cheerios or rats in the garbage can scavenging for Thanksgiving
leftovers. We don’t tend to think of a soft, cuddly companion sharing our children’s
bedrooms. But to leap to such unsavory conclusions is to underestimate
what is, in truth, a fascinating, even amazing, branch of the animal kingdom
that has lived closely with humans throughout much of our history. Frankly,
that fact alone deserves our respect.
So our first step toward understanding the hamster the way he would like us to
understand him is to explore his extended family, his roots: the family of rodents.


The Rodent Clan

In the vast sea of species that comprise the animal kingdom, the hamster is a
member of the rodent order of mammals. The rodents, in fact, are the largest of
all mammalian orders. Approximately 50 percent of all mammalian species are
Our relationship with rodents has not always been friendly, partly because they like to eat the grain we store.

Rodents are essentially named for their world-class gnawing abilities. The
word “rodent” comes from the Latin word rodere, which means to gnaw.
Rodents are able to gnaw so effectively because their teeth are designed for a special
style of jaw movement that has ensured their survival through the ages. They
have one pair of upper and one pair of lower incisor teeth. Both pairs grow constantly
throughout the animal’s life and require regular gnawing activity to
remain trimmed to a manageable length.

In terms of physical characteristics, most rodent species are relatively small
and compact. They use their delicate “hands” to carry out a variety of functions,
including collecting and manipulating food, and grooming. Some rodents, such
as the hamster, are also graced with ample cheek pouches, in which they can
store large amounts of food to carry to secret caches, where they can store the
food for a time when food is not so plentiful.

Rodents’ teeth, combined with the various species’ evolutionary gifts (which
typically include staggering reproduction rates), and their uncanny ability to
reap the benefits of close proximity to humans, have led these animals to be
regarded almost exclusively as pests (particularly rodents of the rat and mice
varieties). But let’s give credit where it’s due. Theirs is an amazing family of animals
found all over the globe in all geographical regions and climates.


Pest or Companion? You Be the Judge

We humans have collected a great deal of information about the various species
of rodents, because, much to our chagrin, where there are humans, there are
probably very opportunistic rodents close by. The two cannot be separated. That
is simply a fact of life and always has been.

Rodents are smart critters who learned long ago that it was much to their
benefit to live in close proximity to humans—a testament to rodent adaptability
and even intelligence. Once humans made their grand entrance within the animal
kingdom, many other animal species realized that where there are humans,
there is food and shelter, too. As human populations have spread across the
globe, they have invariably overtaken lands that were originally occupied by
nonhuman species—or inadvertently transported those species with them.
Many of these species have not survived our encroachment or their own immigration,
but others have, and with great success. Case in point: the rodents.
Given their proximity to humans, it is to the family’s misfortune that rodents
have also come to be known as carriers of disease and parasites, thanks primarily
to the fleas they carried that led to the spread of the plague throughout Europe
during the Middle Ages. Because of this guilt by association, to this day the
possibility of a rodent invading our food supply, home, and/or workplace has
caused humans great concern. When we see the first telltale sign of a gnawed
cardboard box in the pantry, we panic, sterilize our homes, and start setting out
poison and traps. Of course, in many cases all we really need to do is think
ahead and work to prevent these uninvited guests from entering our homes in
the first place by storing our food correctly in secure, airtight containers.
And yet, it seems that various rodents—including the hamster, and even the
mouse and the rat—have had the last laugh, as they have become domesticated
household companions to humans. Here we humans are, feeding them, sheltering
them, and in some cases even buying them toys and helping them increase
their numbers by breeding them purposely. Perhaps these animals have much
more in the brain department than we give them credit for.

What Makes a Hamster a Rodent?

As we already know, a hamster is part of the rodent order of mammals. They
are covered with fur, are warm-blooded, and give birth to live young. Much to
these animals’ great benefit, with few exceptions, hamsters have only the tiniest
stub of a tail. This makes them more acceptable as pets to people who are
haunted by images of rats, regarded with such disgust by many for their long,
naked tails.

Let’s explore a little further how rodent characteristics manifest in the members
of the large extended family that we call hamsters. The more you can learn
about these traits, the better equipped you will be to provide your hamster with
all he needs for the healthiest, most
satisfying, longest life possible.


The Teeth

We can always tell a rodent by his
teeth. While the various rodent
species are typically recognized by
their differences in color, size, coat
type, tail, behavior, sleeping habits,
social structure, and dietary preferences,
all share a common characteristic
in their front teeth, their
incisors. Take a look at any hamster,
LaFawndah shows off her rodent teeth. especially at mealtime as he carefully
nibbles a tasty morsel of food held in his delicate grasp, and you’ll see clearly the
miracles that are rodent teeth.

The rodent incisors are marvels of engineering that continue to grow
throughout the individual rodent’s life. The jaw is structured to ensure that the
animal can constantly gnaw, to keep his chisel-like incisors properly filed.
This gnawing action also enables those incisors to contact the lower set of
teeth at just the right angle to finish the job. Marvels of engineering are not typically
what most of us think of when we think of hamsters, but there they are.
If the hamster’s ever-growing incisors are not properly filed in the course of
his day-to-day activities—which will happen to the unfortunate rodent with a
misaligned jaw—the animal will starve to death and suffer a great deal of pain in
the meantime, as his teeth continue to grow and pierce various regions of his
mouth and face.


The Hip Glands

The typical hamster has two large glands on each side of his body, close to his
hips. Males have larger glands than those we find on female hamsters. The
glands secrete an oily substance that acts as a territory marker (perhaps an issue
more important to the males of the species). The hamster’s fur usually hides the
glands, but sometimes a wet spot or matted fur will indicate their location on
the hamster’s body.

You may sometimes spot your hamster rubbing up against the sides of his
cage or enclosure; this is an instinctive, territorial behavior. Hamsters in the
wild, you see, rub themselves against the walls of their burrows to mark their
presence and stake their territory. Hamsters have a mild musk scent that can
sometimes be detected when their glands are actively secreting. Because their
eyesight is not typically their strongest sense, hamsters rely upon these scent
markings to designate and recognize their territory.


Rodent Reproduction

To ensure that their species survive through all eternity, especially when confronted
daily by pest-extermination companies and successful predator species
ranging from foxes to coyotes to bears to humans, rodents are phenomenally
quick breeders. They need to make sure that even if many, many individuals die,
their species will survive.

This characteristic is one shared by the hamster members of the rodent family—
which comes as no surprise to those unsuspecting owners who didn’t realize they
had a male and female in that cage rather than the two females the pet-shop clerk
promised.

Most hamsters reach sexual maturity within a few weeks after birth, and, if
left to their own devices, they will begin reproducing at the first opportunity.
They often produce large litters, and may find themselves caring for two or three
generations just weeks apart in age.


Types of Hamsters

As we can see, hamsters embody the classic characteristics of their extended rodent
family. For some reason, however, we have decided to designate them as pet rather
than pest. As a result, we have seen the hamster family grow in type as well as
numbers, often with the determined and very calculated assistance of humans.
Today, hamsters who have forged long-term relationships with humans come
in all sizes, colors, personalities, and geographical preferences. So before one
simply lumps all hamsters under a single name and assumes that all are identical
in behavior and lifestyle, it is wise to take a look into the world of these animals
and see what differences exist between the various hamster.


The Classic Golden (a.k.a. Syrian)

The most well known of all the hamster species, the one most commonly kept as
a household pet, is the golden, or Syrian, hamster. When parents regale their
children with loving stories about their own childhood hamster, an animal with
Esther is a classic golden hamster.

As his name suggests, the classic golden hamster is gold: typically, gold on his
back with white on his underside (a pattern that is perhaps designed to camouflage
the animal in his desert homeland), with large, dark eyes that help him
navigate the terrain during his nocturnal forays. But in light of the popularity of
this attractive pocket pet, humans have selectively bred the golden to alter what
nature made. This has resulted in vast differences of appearances within the
species.

Technically, there is only one species of pet golden. But, thanks to careful
breeding practices, there are now a number of varieties. Colors abound, including
cinnamon, cream, white, black, silver, and more. Purists believe the original
golden remains the most genetically healthy, because the colors are often produced
by breeding related individuals. Coat patterns abound as well, evident in
the spots and patches seen on so many contemporary hamsters. But of course,
one would never find such patterns on hamsters in the wild.
Also absent in the wild are longhaired hamsters or those with short, soft, velvety
coats. Yet pet hamsters with these characteristics do exist in captivity today,
thanks to breeding practices that encourage the long hair of the so-called teddy
bear hamster, and the shiny, velvety texture of the satin, both of which have
become quite popular pets. There are also longhaired and shorthaired rex hamsters,
whose coats are wavy and tend to stand out from the animals’ bodies. Rex
hamsters also have curly whiskers. And finally, breeders have even produced
hairless hamsters with nothing but curly whiskers.


Classic Golden Facts

Classic golden hamsters are usually about 6 to 8 inches long
(although they can grow as big as 11 inches) and weigh 3 to 5
ounces. They are thought to be colorblind and probably see
their world in shades of black and white. Typically nocturnal by
nature (but, in keeping with their rodent roots, somewhat
adaptable to the daytime schedules in their human households),
golden hamsters are most active in the hours between
7 and 11 p.m.


Bring on the Dwarfs

While the golden may be the classic, there is a new kid on the block who is taking
the hamster world by storm. Actually, make that several new kids. These are
the various dwarf hamsters, adorable little critters who are becoming more and
more popular in hamster-owning homes nationwide.
A relative newcomer to captivity, the dwarf thus far seems to be taking to life
among humans quite well, earning positive reviews as a family pet. Dwarf hamsters
can range in length from 2 to 4 inches. There are several dwarf species,
identified by their small size, delicate feet, and compact, ball-like physique, as
well as their desire to live with others of their kind—an arrangement the solitary
golden hamster simply cannot tolerate. Most of them are quite beautiful in
addition to their “cute” factor.

While some owners say dwarfs are more prone than goldens to bite the hands
that feed them, others enjoy the fact that dwarfs, who may be more challenging
to tame, tend to be more sociable with others of their own kind. Their fans do
tend to claim, however, that dwarf hamsters can be quite docile and friendly with
the humans in their lives, if those humans are willing to maintain regular socialization
practices and handle them very gently. But such endorsements must be
tempered with the warning that hamster congeniality usually has more to do
with an individual hamster than with the species at large. And always, it is rooted
in positive experiences with humans and other hamsters, and positive associations
forged from being handled gently and socialized carefully from a young age.


The Russians

In the early 1900s, a gentleman
named W. C. Campbell discovered
a unique and very tiny hamster who
would go on to immortalize his
name. Today the Campbell’s, or
Russian, dwarf is probably the most
popular dwarf hamster on the pet
market. The dwarf we call the
Russian hails not only from Russia,
but also from China and Mongolia,
and his popularity derives from his
soft coat, the dorsal stripe that runs
down his back, his small size, his
round physique, and all the attributes
that have led to the popularity
Koutouzis is a Russian dwarf hamster. of dwarfs in the first place.

As happens with any hamster who enjoys popularity, the Campbell’s Russian
is found in many color variations and usually has a sleek, shiny coat, similar to
that of the Syrian hamster.
The Campbell’s Russian is not, however, the only Russian dwarf out there.
The winter white dwarf, also know as the Siberian dwarf, is similar to the
Campbell’s, but, as he would be the first to tell you, is not the same. He is the
smaller of the two Russians, and he is called winter white because if kept in a
cool environment, his typically gray coat can turn pure white. He is also known
to be amiable and relatively easy to hand tame.


The Roborovski Dwarf

Another type of dwarf hamster you are more and more likely to find these days is
the Roborovski dwarf. He is the smallest of the dwarfs. He is also the dwarf most
likely to win sprint medals at the Olympics because he tends to be the fastest.
Keep this in mind when you are choosing his home (a glass aquarium tank is
probably a better choice than a traditional cage). You’ll also need an extra-safe
security plan when you would like to spend time with him outside his habitat.
If you ever need to identify an escaped Roborovski, you can recognize him by
his white eyebrows and his lack of the dorsal stripe made popular by his Russian
cousins.


The Chinese Dwarf

To the untrained eye, this dwarf
hamster may resemble a mouse, the
primary reason for this being the
presence of a tail. He is usually
found in one of two color variations:
brown with a white stripe
down the back and a white stomach,
or white with brown patches.
The Chinese hamster’s body type
tends to be long and thin, and his
personality depends largely on how
he is tamed as a youngster.
You may not quite know what
you are getting with a Chinese
hamster. Some are quite friendly,
others . . . well . . . not so much. So
it is essential that you look for
breeders who hand tame their Zippy is a Chinese dwarf hamster.
20 Part I The World of the Hamster
babies. This is not as difficult as it once was, because the Chinese dwarf is not
nearly as rare on the American pet market as it was when dwarfs were first making
a name for themselves as pets.

Wild Hamsters

With many rodent species that are typically kept as pets, you can sometimes
choose between domestically bred animals and those who are captured in the
wild and sold as pets. This is not the case with the hamster. Pet hamsters have
been bred to be pets, pure and simple. However, there is one wild type of hamster
who has quite a bit of experience with humans—most of it negative. This is
the largest member of the hamster family, the common hamster, and he is not
one you are likely to find as a pet. He is the only hamster seen readily in the wild
today—although, unfortunately, not quite as readily as he once was.
A striking animal with an almost raccoon-like coat of black and brown, the
common hamster is quite large for a hamster. This animal was once abundant
throughout Russia and Central Europe, but his preference for a vegetarian diet
proved to be his population’s undoing. Naturally drawn to the crops cultivated
on farms, the common hamster was targeted, as so many rodents are, as an
enemy of farmers. The result has been a severe decline in the numbers of common
hamsters in their native territory. Although common hamsters are not as
plentiful in the wild as they once were, humanity discovered long ago that
totally eliminating rodent populations is nearly impossible.

Periodically, there is talk of recruiting the common hamster into the ranks of
pet hamsters, where he would join the golden and the dwarf. To date, that seems
highly unlikely, given the common hamster’s somewhat irritable and classically
wild temperament when forced into captivity. Nevertheless, he remains an
object of fascination to pet hamster enthusiasts. The common hamster embodies
the typical hamster characteristics to which hamster owners have become
accustomed—plus, as a bonus, he has a talent for swimming.
Other wild hamsters that are not typically kept as pets include various hamsters
who live in Africa, Asia, and Western Europe. Some of these animals even
have tails. These include Chinese hamsters, native not only to China, but to
Europe and Russia as well; mouselike hamsters, who call the Middle East home;
and white-tailed hamsters, native to South Africa and commonly referred to as
the white-tailed rat. Like their cousin the common hamster, these species do not
have the temperament or the physical adaptability to thrive in a captive environment
with humans.

Snake, Lizard, and Related Animals

Snake, Lizard, and Related Animals

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God
had made.

—Genesis 3:1


Snakes can have dozens of young at a time, and so they are often symbols
of fertility. They resemble vegetation, especially roots, in their
form and frequently in the green and brown of their skins. The form
of a snake also suggests a river. A point of muscular tension passes
through the body of a snake and drives the animal forward, like a mo-
ment moving along a continuum of days and years. Like time itself, a
snake seems to progress while remaining still. In addition, the body of
a snake resembles those marks with a stylus, brush, or pen that make
up our letters. Ornamental alphabets of the ancient Celts and others
were often composed of intertwined serpents. It could even be that
the tracks of a snake in sand helped to inspire the invention of the alphabet.
The manner in which snakes curl up in a ball has made people
associate them with the sun.

According to one legend, Sakyamuni, who later became the
Buddha, was once walking beside a cliff when he looked down and
saw a great dragon renowned for wisdom. Seeking enlightenment,
Sakyamuni asked many questions, and the dragon answered all of
them correctly. Finally, Sakyamuni asked the meaning of life and
death. The dragon replied that it would answer only when its hunger
had been stilled. Sakyamuni promised his body as food, and the
dragon revealed the ultimate truth. Then Sakyamuni hurled himself
into the open jaws of the dragon, which suddenly changed into a lotus
flower and carried him back to the precipice. The snake, in this
case a dragon, is an eternal mediator between opposites: good and
evil, creation and destruction, female and male, earth and air, water
and fire, love and fear.

Since the snake does not have exposed sexual organs, it is very
hard to tell the male snakes from the female ones. Serpents often represent
a primeval androgynous state before the separation of male
and female. In the ancient world, however, serpents were associated
with a vast number of goddesses. These include the Greek Athena, the
Mesopotamian Ishtar, the Egyptian Buto, and the Babylonian Tiamat,
a primeval goddess from whose blood the world was created. The
pharaohs of ancient Egypt would wear uraeus on their heads, a protective
image of the goddess Wadjet in the form of a cobra, leaning
back and ready to strike.

As people turned more to patriarchal deities, there was a massive
revolt against the cult of the snake. This is why serpents are so often
destructive in mythologies from very early urban civilizations.
Egyptians believed that the serpent Apep would try to devour the
boat of the sun god Ra, who sailed through the earth every night. Serpents
have been killed by just about every major god or hero of the
ancient world and by many heroes in medieval times as well. The
Babylonian Marduk killed the serpent-goddess Tiamat, and Zeus
killed the primeval serpent Typhon. Apollo, the son of Zeus, killed the
serpent Python to gain the shrine at Delphi, formerly sacred to the
goddess Gaia. As an infant in his crib, Hercules killed two serpents.

Cadmus, a legendary founder of Greek civilization, killed a serpent
and then planted its teeth, whereupon warriors sprang from the earth
to become the ancestors of the noble families of Thebes. Sigurd, the
Norse hero, killed the dragon Fafner. Saint George—patron of England,
Russia, and Venice—killed a dragon, while Saint Patrick drove
the snakes out of Ireland. Even today in some communities in Texas,
people festively collect rattlesnakes, tease them, and finally kill them
for food during annual rattlesnake roundups.

Images of the snake are often similar in cultures that appear to
have little or no contact with each other. In Aztec mythology, for example,
there was once a female serpent, the earth mother Coatlicue, in
a primordial sea. The gods Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca made
Heaven and earth from two parts of her body, an act of creation
strangely reminiscent of the creation myth about the Babylonian serpentine
goddess Tiamat. Quetzalcoatl, who vanquished Coatlicue,
also took on ophidian features, and he was depicted as a feathered
serpent of jade. Some of the mythology of serpents may go back to a
time before humanity spread across the world and divided into different
cultures.

After expelling Adam and Eve from Eden for eating from the
Tree of Knowledge, Yahweh placed a curse on the serpent, which has
ever since crept upon the ground. But just as the biblical Yahweh does
not seem unequivocally good, so the serpent of Eden does not appear
entirely evil. Both, in fact, are figures that appear to transcend all
earthly categories. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the serpent of
Eden was often painted with a human head, usually that of a woman.

At times, the serpent is a mirror image of Eve. Even in paintings
where the head of the serpent is bestial, the serpent and Eve often
seem to be exchanging meaningful glances, while Adam simply looks
confused. Eve and the serpent share a feminine wisdom. The serpent
of Eden has also been identified with Lilith, the first wife of Adam,
who was also a Sumerian goddess-demon.
The large, intense eyes of the snake are very mysterious. Pliny
the Elder and countless subsequent writers have reported that snakes
can hypnotize and even kill with a simple gaze. The basilisk, a serpent
with a crown and wings, reportedly had this ability, as did the rattlesnake
in the United States. Many authors, from journalists and novelists
to serious natural scientists, reported that snakes could draw
birds out of the sky by looking upward and could sometimes even
work their powers of fascination on human beings.
The serpent has frequently been revived and even deified, especially
by the Gnostics and the alchemists. What is feared as “regression”
may also be celebrated as “rejuvenation.” Serpents are ancient
symbols of healing. In the Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh, the serpent
steals the plant of immortality, then sheds its skin and lives forever.
Ancient physicians from Greece to China realized that venom
extracted from certain serpents could be used to cure ailments such as
paralysis. Serpents are associated with the Greek healer Asclepius,
who once raised a man from the dead. The ancient Greek physicians,
or Asclepiadae, had so much confidence in the healing powers of the
serpent that they would sometimes place snakes in the beds of patients
with high fevers. The snakes may have served as a sort of
placebo, and the coolness of the serpents’ flesh could have convinced
the sufferer that he was recovering. The caduceus, a wand with two
serpents entwined around it, was carried by Hygeia, daughter of Asclepius,
and by the god Hermes. Today it remains a symbol of the
medical profession.

The alchemists saw the serpent as an animal that joined all of the
four elements from which the cosmos was formed. Of all animals, serpents
are the most intimately associated with the earth. This further
associates them with fire, since that element escapes from the earth in
volcanoes. The red tongue of many serpents, ending in a fork and
flickering in and out, also suggests flame. Dragons, especially in Eu-
ropean traditions, often breathe fire. Furthermore, serpents may also
frequently be found in water, and their rhythmic motion suggests
waves. Many dragons and other serpentine figures are often depicted
with wings.

Among the most popular images among the alchemists was the

ouroboros, a snake with its tail in its mouth, a symbol of primal unity
that goes back to ancient Egypt—at least to the time of The Egyptian
Book of the Dead, written around 1,500 B.C.—and was later taken over
by the esoteric religions of Greece. An analogous figure is the serpent
Mitgard of Norse mythology, which is coiled around the earth. The
Chinese used the V-shaped fangs of a serpent to symbolize the
essence of life, and the upside-down version represented the spirits of
deceased ancestors.

From the point of view of folklore, lizards may generally be regarded
as snakes, even though most (though not all) lizards have legs.
Because these animals are often found lying in the desert sun, they
have sometimes been associated with contemplative ecstasy. Pliny the
Elder reported that the salamander, a black-and-yellow lizard found
in most of southern Europe, would seek the hottest fire to breed in
and would quench the flames with the coldness of its body. Paracelsus,
an influential alchemist and physician of the Renaissance, believed
that the salamander was a being of pure fire. The salamander
sitting inside a furnace became a symbol of esoteric knowledge. The
salamander was compared to the three young Hebrews in the book of
Daniel who were thrown into a fiery furnace by the king of Babylon
but were not harmed by the flames (3:22–97) and to Christ descending
into Hell.

Even the Hebrews, who reacted so vehemently against the archaic
cult of the serpent, have occasionally attributed godlike power
to this animal. In the book of Exodus, Moses and Aaron were demanding
of Pharaoh that the people of Israel be released from
bondage. To demonstrate the power of his god, Aaron threw his staff
down in front of Pharaoh and his court. It immediately turned into a
serpent. At the direction of Pharaoh, the magicians of the court of
Egypt took their staffs and performed the same magical act. Then the
serpent that had been Aaron’s staff swallowed those of the magicians
(7:9–13). Later, on the journey to Canaan, the Hebrews were stricken
by a plague of fiery serpents. Moses directed the people of Israel to
erect a bronze serpent on a standard. All those who looked upon the
brazen serpent were saved from death (Num. 21:4–9). Had these stories
not been sanctioned by scripture, the bronze serpent would probably
have seemed to the Jews like sorcery and idolatry. Among the
most extravagant dragons of all was the one that did battle with Saint
Michael in the biblical Revelation. It had seven heads, each bearing a
crown, and ten horns, and it swept a third of the stars from the sky
with its tail (12: 1–9).

A positive view of the serpent has also frequently been preserved
in folk culture. During his wanderings after the fall of Troy, Aeneas’
father, Anchises, had died. Landing on the coast of Sicily, Aeneas
began the funeral rites by pouring out wine, milk, and the blood of
sacrificial victims. Then he cast flowers upon the funeral mound and
started his oration.

He had barely begun to speak when, in the words
of Virgil’s Aeneid, translated by John Dryden:

Scarce had he finished, when, with speckled pride,
A serpent from the tomb began to glide;
His hungry bulk on sev’n high volumes roll’d;
Blue was his breadth of black, but streaked with scaly gold:
Thus riding on his curls, he seem’d to pass
A rolling fire along, and singe the grass.
More various colors thro’ his body run,
Than Iris with her bow imbibes the sun.
Betwixt the rising altars, and around,
The sacred monster shot along the ground;
With harmless play amidst the bowls he pass’s,
And with his lolling tongue assay’d the taste:
Thus fed with holy food, the wondrous guest
Within the hollow tomb retir’d to rest. (book 5)

The snake was the spirit of his father, whom Aeneas would later visit
in Hades. Romans would sometimes feed snakes at household altars.
In Zoological Mythology, Angelo De Gubernatis wrote that the
practice of keeping a snake in the home for good luck survived among
Italian peasants into modern times. The Sythians, who lived by the
Black Sea and were known for their fierceness, traced their ancestry to
the daughter of the Dnieper River, who was a woman above the waist
but whose body ended in a serpent’s tail. Not only the ancient Romans
but many other peoples—for example, Australian Aborigines—
have believed that ancestors return in the form of snakes. Zulu kings
of legend sometimes would return to this world in the form of a powerful
snake.

Despite, or because of, the fact that they are not easily distinguished
by gender, snakes appear highly sexual, and there are many
tales of serpentine paramours. One fable from the Hindu-Persian Pan-
chatantra tells of a Brahman and his wife who had longed for children
but were unable to conceive. One day a voice in the temple promised
the Brahman a son who would surpass all others in both appearance
and character. Ashort time later his wife did indeed become pregnant,
but she gave birth not to a human being but to a snake. Her friends
advised her to have the monster killed, but she insisted on raising the
snake as her child, keeping him in a large box, bathing him regularly,
and feeding him fine delicacies. At her urging, the Brahman even
arranged for the snake to marry a beautiful girl, the daughter of a
friend. The girl, who had a strong sense of duty, accepted the marriage
and took over the care of the reptile. One day, a strange voice
called her in her chamber. At first she thought a strange man had broken
in, but it was her husband, who had climbed out of the snakeskin
and taken on human form. In the morning the Brahman burned the
snakeskin, so his son would not be transformed again, then proudly
introduced the young couple to all the neighbors.
Both snakes and dragons are designated by the same word,
draco, in Latin. We can generally regard dragons as snakes, just as zoologists
of the Middle Ages and Renaissance did. Edward Topsell, for
example, wrote in The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents and Insects
(1657), “There be some Dragons which have wings and no feet,
some again have neither feet nor wings, but are only distinguished
from the common sort of Serpents by the combe growing upon their
heads and the beard under their cheeks” (vol. 2, p. 705). The variety
and range of dragons vastly exceed those of any other mythic animal.
Dragons often have features of other animals, such as the wings of
bats or horns of stags, but these are set upon serpentine forms. Just as
it mediates between the elements, the snake seems to combine features
of all creatures in its incarnation as the dragon.

The Chinese dragon known as “lung” is among the most colorful
and extravagant composites. When first born, it appears as a simple
serpent. Over thousands of years of life, it acquires the head of a
camel, the scales of a carp, the horns of a deer, the eyes of a hare, the
tusks of a boar, and the ears of an ox. It also has four short legs with
enormous claws, a mouth with long teeth, and a flowing mane running
down its back. A combination of fire and steam issues from its
nostrils to form the clouds, and so it controls the weather. These dragons
are the most beneficent figures of the Chinese zodiac.

In European culture, opposites are generally thought of as mutually

exclusive, whereas Asians tend to view them as complementary.
Because of this, Western culture has alternated between admiration
and scorn for the serpent, while the Chinese have expressed both
at once. In very archaic times, the serpent was almost universally
revered in China. Into the twentieth century, several temples in southern
China have followed the tradition of keeping sacred serpents that
are offered wine and eggs on the altar. Chinese culture gradually began
to distinguish sharply between the snake and the dragon, yet the
two are associated as contraries. The snake represents qualities opposite
to those of the dragon in the Chinese zodiac, where its symbolism
is remarkably close to that in the Judeo-Christian tradition; the snake
is as deceitful as the dragon is exuberant.

As the modern period began, people increasingly thought of the
snake as masculine. The traditional eroticism of the snake was originally
considered primarily a feminine attribute, later a male one. The
latter view was sanctioned especially by Freudian psychology, where
people have usually interpreted the snake as phallic. In James Joyce’s
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the hero, Stephen Dedaelus, calls his
sexual organ “the serpent, the most subtle beast of the field” (chap. 3).
Legend usually locates fantastic beasts on the frontier of human
exploration, and the serpent is a good example. With the expansion of
maritime trade at the end of the Middle Ages, the Great Sea Serpent
was second in importance only to the mermaid as a figure in the law
of mariners. Sightings of serpentine creatures were reported everywhere
from Loch Ness in Scotland to the coasts of the New World and
were often attested to by persons who had reputations for good judgment
and sobriety. The animals were identified with many mythological
creatures, from the Norse serpent Mitgard to the biblical
Leviathan. While the descriptions differed in their details, they generally
described the serpent as extremely long and as moving with an
undulating motion. On August 21, 1936, for example, newspapers reported
that several Newfoundland fishermen had seen a monster that
was at least 200 feet long, had “eyes as big as an enamel saucepan,”
snorted blue vapor from its nostrils, and stirred up such waves that
“for days no boat dared venture out to sea” (O’Neill, pp. 194–195).
The symbolism of the snake has changed far less fundamentally
than has that of other animals such as the dog or horse. It seems to surface
whenever people contemplate origins, whether of humanity, of
life, or even of the universe itself. Today, the DNA code that directs the
development of the embryo is sometimes called “the cosmic serpent.”

Selected References

Gubernatis, Angelo De. Zoological Mythology or the Legends of Animals.
Chicago: Singing Tree Press, 1968.
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Barnes
and Noble Books, 1999.
234 Snake, Lizard, and Related Animals
Milton, John. Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. New York: Penguin,
1976.
Mundkur, Balaji. The Cult of the Serpent: An Interdisciplinary Survey of
Its Manifestations and Origins. Albany: SUNY Press, 1983.
Nott, Charles Stanley. The Flowery Kingdom. New York: Chinese Study
Group of America, 1947.
O’Neill J. P. The Great New England Sea Serpent: An Account of Unknown
Creatures Sighted by Many Respectable Persons between 1638 and the
Present Day. Camden, ME: Down East Books, 1999.
Roob, Alexander. Alchemy and Mysticism. New York: Taschen, 1997.
Rybot, Doris. It Began before Noah. London: Michael Joseph, 1972.
Ryder, Arthur W., ed. The Panchatantra. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1964.
Sax, Boria. The Serpent and the Swan: The Animal Bride in Folklore and
Literature. Blacksburg, VA: McDonald and Woodward, 1998.
Sun, Ruth Q. The Asian Animal Zodiac. Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 1974.
Topsell, Edward, and Thomas Muffet. The History of Four-Footed Beasts
and Serpents and Insects (3 vols.). New York: Da Capo, 1967 (facsimile
of 1658 edition).
Virgil. Virgil’s Aeneid. Trans. John Dryden. New York: P. F. Collier and
Son, 1937.

Hare and Rabbit

Hare and Rabbit

What is it—a hopper of ditches, a cutter of corn, a little brown cow without
any horns? Answer: A hare.

—Irish riddle


The hare and rabbit, members of the family Leporidae, are rodents, yet
they usually have a far more benign reputation in folklore than does
their close relative the rat. While rabbits are highly social, hares often
tend to be solitary. Hares are also larger than rabbits and have smaller
litters. Nevertheless, the two are often confused in folklore, and much
the same stories are told of both. Like most other animals that are
prominent in myth and legend, leporids are dramatically distinguished
from other animals by a single feature—their long ears.
Though not terribly fast runners, they are remarkably agile, and their
ability to elude predators by changing direction instantly has doubtless
contributed to their reputation as tricksters. Even more than most
other rodents, they reproduce prolifically, a characteristic that has
made leporids, especially rabbits, symbols of fertility throughout the
world. They are endearingly timid, arousing an affection that often
makes it hard for farmers to shoot them, even when they ravish
planted fields. The most remarkable feature of their lore, however, is
the notion that a hare may be seen in the moon, a belief shared by
many cultures across the globe, including the Chinese, Hottentots,
and Maya Indians.

The widespread association of the hare with the moon cannot be
due simply to the contours of lunar landscapes, since people envisage
the hare in the moon in very divergent ways. One reason for the association
is that the act of a hare leaping suggests the rising moon.
Also, the patterns of white, gray, and brown on the bodies of hares
are suggestive of the lunar surface. But the most important reason is
probably the extreme watchfulness of hares, which at attention stand
almost completely still with their eyes wide open and their ears
raised. This suggests the moon, especially when full, which appears
to be continually watching events on earth.

The Jatakas, early Buddhist animal fables from India, tell one of
the many stories created to explain the hare-moon relationship. The
future Buddha was once a hare and lived together with three wise animals,
a monkey, a jackal, and an otter. He preached to the other creatures
of the forest, telling them to give alms. Sakra, the god of thunder,
heard him and came down to the forest in the guise of a Brahman.
The monkey offered him fruit, then the jackal offered meat, and the otter
offered fish. Finally, the Brahman came to the hare, who directed
him to gather wood and start a fire. When the fire was blazing, the
hare hopped in, for he had resolved to offer his own body as food. The
flames, however, would not burn. The Brahman revealed that he was
truly a god. Then he squeezed a mountain to make ink, and he drew
an image of the hare in the moon.

The Chinese see a hare with a mortar and pestle, grinding the
elixir of life, in the moon, an idea inspired by the reproductive powers
of the animal. This vision comes from the story of Chang-O, the
beautiful wife of the famous archer King Ho-Yi. The Queen Mother of
Heaven once gave Ho-Yi a pill containing the elixir of immortality at
a festivity. The king had drunk much wine and wished to sleep before
swallowing the pill, so he entrusted it to Chang-O. She swallowed the
pill, immediately felt very light, and soon discovered that she had the
gift of flight. On awakening, Ho-Yi asked for the pill, and Chang-O
flew away to the moon. One day she coughed up the pill, which immediately
changed into a white hare. Chang-O demanded that the
hare restore the elixir, and she gave the rabbit a mortar and pestle to
grind it. But since she was now subject to the ravages of age, Chang-
O turned into a three-legged toad as she looked on and waited for the
hare to finish.

A story in the third book of the Hindu-Persian Panchatantra may
affectionately poke fun at the association between the leporids and
the moon, though it also shows the rabbit (in some versions, a hare)
in the familiar role of trickster. Aherd of elephants discovered the paradisial
Lake of the Moon, and in their eagerness to drink, they
crushed many rabbits to death. A rabbit named Victory went the next
day to the king of the elephants, saying he was an envoy of the moon
and protected by the laws of diplomacy. He rebuked the king and his
herd for killing rabbits, who were under the protection of the moon,
and he spoke so eloquently that the monarch wished to find the moon
and beg forgiveness. Victory led the king to a place where the full
moon shone brilliantly in the water of the lake. When the elephant
tried to bow down before it, his trunk touched the water, breaking the
image into thousands of pieces. At that Victory said, “Woe, woe to
you, O King! You have doubly enraged the moon.” The elephant then
promised never to return, and the rabbits once again had the lake to
themselves (Ryder, pp. 308–315).

In the fables of Aesop, the hare is also a trickster, though, like
most other tricksters, he often becomes a victim of his own cleverness.
Perhaps the most famous fable of all is “The Tortoise and the Hare.”
The hare had mocked the slowness of a tortoise, which then chal-
lenged him to a race. The hare agreed, and as the race began, he
spurted ahead and gained a big lead. Supremely confident, the hare
dawdled, rested, and played until the slow but steady tortoise overtook
him to claim victory.

Julius Caesar stated that the hare was sacred to the early Britons.
According to the Roman historian Dio Cassius, Queen Boudicca, who
led the Britons in revolt against Roman rule, would release a hare
from the folds of her dress before each campaign. The direction in
which the hare ran would be used to predict the outcome of the battle.
The Easter Bunny, originally a hare, was probably a sacrificial animal
offered to the gods at the start of spring. Closely associated with
the Easter Bunny are colored eggs, which hark back to pre-Christian
celebrations of spring in Slavic lands. At one time eggs may have accompanied
the hare not only in games but also in festive meals.
In the European Middle Ages, hares were both familiars and the
guises under which witches ran about at night. One confessed witch,
Isobel Gowdie, told how she had taken the form of a hare when
hounds surprised her. She managed to evade them by running into a
house and hiding long enough to say the rhyme that disenchanted
her, though she still carried a mark on her back where a hound had
nipped at her. In Precious Bane (first published in 1924), a novel by
Mary Webb set in the countryside of early-nineteenth-century Shropshire,
the heroine, Prudence Sarn, had a harelip, a slit upper lip like
that of a hare. Her mother thought that the deformity had been
caused by a hare’s running across her path shortly before Prudence
was born. Fellow villagers constantly suspected the young woman of
a connection with the Devil.

All across Africa, the hare is an important trickster figure, and he
often matches his cleverness against the size and strength of a hyena
or a lion. In one Hausa story from Nigeria, the lion had so terrified the
other animals of the forest that they made a deal with him. One animal
would come to the lion and sacrifice itself every day if the king of
beasts would no longer hunt. After a gazelle, an antelope, and many
other animals had given their lives, it was the turn of the hare. The
hare told the lion that he had brought a special present of honey but
that another lion, who was even fiercer, had demanded the gift. When
the king of beasts demanded to know where his challenger was, the
hare pointed to a well. The lion looked into the well, saw his own reflection,
pounced, and drowned. All animals acclaimed the hare as the
new king of beasts.

Master Rabbit is a trickster well known to several Native American
tribes. The Ute tell how Rabbit once became angry because the
sun had burned his back. He tested his skills by killing all the people
and animals that crossed his path until he felt mighty enough to duel
the sun. When he hurled a magic ball at the sun, fire spread all over
the earth, and Rabbit was seared so badly that he began to cry. When
his tears had finally put out the flames, Rabbit realized that killing
could not solve problems. In the lore of the Lenape Indians of the
Northeast, Hare, also called Tschimammus, was one of the twins born
to the earth mother after she had fallen from the clouds. He ascended
to Heaven, and since he was expected to return to earth, Indian converts
to Christianity identified Hare with Jesus.

But perhaps the best-known, and certainly the most controversial,
leporid of modern times is Brer Rabbit, from the tales that Joel Chandler
Harris put in the mouth of an old black man named Uncle Remus
toward the end of the nineteenth century. Brer Rabbit is as ruthless as
he is clever, and he continually matches wits with larger predators such
as the fox, the wolf, and the bear. His adversaries often end up not only
defeated but cuckolded, roasted, flayed, or otherwise horribly punished.
When Brer Fox has been killed through trickery, Brer Rabbit
gives the unfortunate animal’s head to the wife of Brer Fox as a steak.
The tales are as controversial as they are popular. Perhaps the
most intense debate in the entire study of American folklore is the relative
contributions to these tales of European, African, and Native
American traditions. The aesthetic and cultural debates about the
tales are no less vehement. While some critics admire the cleverness
of Brer Rabbit, others consider him a racist caricature, portraying
blacks as shiftless and amoral. But the Brer Rabbit tales remain, in any
case, an important part of African-American folklore, and those who
find the versions by Harris inaccurate or patronizing may prefer those
of Zora Neale Hurston and others.

The most famous story told by Harris is that of Brer Rabbit and
the Tar Baby. Brer Fox had made a little figure out of tar, left it in the
bushes, and watched until Brer Rabbit came down the road. When the
Tar Baby failed to return his greeting, Brer Rabbit became angry and
struck the figure. His paw stuck to the tar, so Brer Rabbit struck again
and again, until finally all his limbs were bound together by the pitch.
Brer Fox had the culprit completely at his mercy and was trying to
choose the most dreadful punishment, when the clever rabbit begged
not to be thrown in the briar patch. Brer Fox promptly tossed the rabbit
in the brambles. “Bred and bawn in a briar patch,” shouted Brer
Rabbit as he ran away (Harris, p. 19). Very similar stories are told of
Hare by the Hausa and other tribes in Africa, as well as of Master Rabbit
by the Apache and other Native Americans.

In the nineteenth century, rabbits and hares became favorite figures
in books for children. Peter Rabbit, created by Beatrix Potter, is
perhaps the most beloved, but just about everybody is also familiar
with the White Rabbit and the March Hare from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland. Potter turns the traditional trickery of
leporids in folklore into childish misbehavior, while Carroll turns it
into the insanity, from a child’s point of view, of adults. Far less appealing
yet in some ways closer to folk traditions is Bugs Bunny, a cartoon
character created by Warner Brothers in the 1940s. An amoral
trickster, Bugs outwits the dim-witted hunter Elmer Fudd, who often
ends up falling from a cliff or being run over by a truck. In the 1970s
Richard Adams tried to give greater dignity to rabbits in Watership
Down, his novel about a group of male rabbits who set out to establish
a new warren. Although rabbits and hares are not patriarchal, virtually
all of these popular images are male.

In Playboy Magazine, young girls are referred to as “bunnies.” In
the Playboy clubs, the hostess bunnies wear skimpy costumes with
long ears and white tails, and every issue of the magazine features a
bunny of the month. These practices build on the reputation of rabbits
for being cute and cuddly. The use of fertility symbolism is paradoxical,
however, since the male clientele supposedly wish to remain unattached
and certainly do not want to have a lot of children. This suggests
that the decoupling of sex and reproduction may be far less
complete in contemporary society than people usually aknowledge.

Selected References

Bierhorst, John. Mythology of the Lenape. Tucson: University of Arizona
Press, 1995.
Erdoes, Richard, and Alfonso Ortiz. American Indian Trickster Tales.
New York: Penguin, 1999.
Ezpeleta, Alicia. Rabbits Everywhere. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.
Harris, Joel Chandler. Uncle Remus: His Stories and His Sayings. New
York: A. Appleton, 1928.
Hughes, D. Wyn, ed. Hares. New York: Congdon and Lattès, 1981.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Mules and Men. New York: HarperPerennial,
1990.
Parrinder, Geoffrey. African Mythology. London: Paul Hamlyn, 1973.
Rowland, Beryl. Animals with Human Faces: A Guide to Animal Symbolism.
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1973.
Ryder, Arthur W., ed. The Panchatantra. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1964.
Santino, Jack. All around the Year: Holidays and Celebrations in American
Life. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995.
Sun, Ruth Q. The Asian Animal Zodiac. Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 1974.
Webb, Mary. Precious Bane. New York: The Modern Library, ca. 1960.

Rat and Mouse

Rat and Mouse

Rats! They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cooks’ own ladles
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men’s Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women’s chats
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.

—Robert Browning, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”


For the most part, rodents and people may be rivals and enemies, yet
the two have a paradoxical intimacy, a bit like a married couple who
cannot live in harmony yet find it impossible to separate. Rats and
mice can adapt to a vast range of environments, and they are quite capable
of living without human beings. Nevertheless, they thrive particularly
in urban settings, where humans inadvertently provide them
with great quantities of food and enclosures for shelter. As carriers of
plague, rodents have killed untold millions of people in the course of
human history. Even today, all our technologies cannot prevent rats
and mice from devouring about a quarter of the grain grown for human
consumption. In the West, rats often appear in nightmares, and
they can inspire revulsion and terror. Nevertheless, their ability to
survive earns grudging respect and admiration from people. In the
Orient, rats are associated above all with prosperity, since they gather
wherever food is plentiful. A Japanese proverb goes, “Getting rich is
to invite the rat” (Sun, p. 29).

Most of folklore up through at least the Renaissance distinguishes
only loosely between rats and mice. In Greek and Latin both
kinds of animals were generally designated by the word “mus,” which
is the origin of our word “mouse.” The word “rat” comes originally
from the Vulgar Latin “rattus,” a term that probably originated in the
Middle Ages. Like they have done with other pairs of closely related
animals— lions and tigers, for example—people have polarized these
rodents as opposites, so in the West the mouse has become beloved
while the rat has become despised. In ancient manuscripts people
usually tend to translate the word “mus” according to whether the rodents
in question seem large and aggressive, like rats, or small and
passive, like mice.

It was not until the nineteenth century that new techniques of
construction enabled people to make buildings ratproof, and before
then rodents were found in every structure, from the barn to the royal
palace. This produced a sort of intimacy with rats and mice, which
must have softened the anger at the damage that they did. Rodents
surely spoiled many meals and even destroyed homes, so it is remarkable
that they were not often demonized in the ancient world.
People might have seen rats and mice only occasionally, but they
could hear them all the time, especially when falling asleep at night.
They could not help but wonder, often with a certain sympathy, what
transpired in the secret society on the other side of holes in the wall.
One early attempt to imagine this is the fable known as “The
Town Mouse and the Country Mouse,” included by the Roman poet
Horace in his Satire II. It tells how a country mouse once received a
city mouse in his humble hole, offering him a few scraps of bacon and
remains of vegetables. The city mouse would hardly deign to touch
such fare. He explained to his rural companion that since life was
short, he should make the most of it by spending his time amid more
pleasant surroundings. A short while later the country mouse accepted
an invitation to dinner from the city mouse. The host brought
in course after course of fine dainties left over from a banquet the
evening before. The guest was rejoicing in his good fortune, when all
of a sudden somebody started banging on the doors and the entire
house trembled at the barking of two ferocious hounds. The terrified
country mouse took his leave, saying he would rather live in peace
than risk his life for sumptuous delights. The fable, a classic expression
of the contrast between the city slicker and the country bumpkin,
has been constantly retold, often set in contemporary urban centers
such as New York or London.

People have been continually amazed at the ability of rodents to
get to food no matter how carefully it seemed to be locked up. Up
through the nineteenth century and even today, they have tried to explain
this with countless anecdotes in which admiration for the ingenuity
of rodents almost always seems to cancel any resentment of
them as pests. Many authors, for example, told how one mouse or rat
would lie on its back and hold an egg in its paws in order to be
dragged like a sled by colleagues. Others would tell how mice stood
on one another’s shoulders to form a living ladder in order to reach
food on a table. Many authors even maintained that rodents had customs
such as burying their dead.

But no affection for rats could ever overcome the practical necessity
of keeping the rodent population under control. The Egyptians
sometimes depicted mice with affection, but they also kept mongooses
and cats in their homes to catch rodents. The eternal rivalry between
cat and mouse became a favorite theme of storytellers, from
Aesop and his fables to the producers of the “Tom and Jerry” cartoons
in America during the twentieth century. In one popular fable
from the Middle Ages, the mice met in council to decide what they
should do about the cat. They agreed that the greatest danger from the
cat lay in the silence of its approach. One mouse proposed that a bell
be tied around the neck of the cat to warn them of its approach. The
members of the council applauded until an old mouse got up and
asked, “Who will bell the cat?”

Herodotus tells of an Egyptian king named Sethos who had once
alienated the warrior class by claiming the soldiers’ ancestral lands.
When the Assyrian Sanacharib invaded Egypt, the warriors refused to
support the king, who was also a priest of the sun god Ra. Sethos entered
the inner sanctuary of Ra’s temple, prayed, and wept until he
fell asleep. The god appeared to him in a dream and told him not to
worry. He should gather whatever soldiers he could, even if they
were only merchants or artisans, and go forth to face the enemy. The
two armies were encamped opposite each other. On the night before
the battle, a swarm of field mice entered the camp of the Assyrians.
They devoured the bowstrings and quivers of the enemy, leaving
them weaponless. Astatue of Sethos was later erected in the temple of
Ra. In his hand, the king held a mouse. The inscription read, “Look on
me, and fear the gods” (book 2, section 141).

Since the lion is a symbol of kingship, it seems possible that that
story may be the ultimate origin of the Aesopian fable “The Lion and
the Mouse,” which was retold by the Roman freedman Phaedrus and
many others. A lion had caught a mouse, which begged to be let go,
saying it might someday return the favor. The lion was so amused at
the idea that so tiny a creature could ever help the king of beasts that
he magnanimously lifted his paw and spared the mouse. Awhile later
hunters caught the lion in a trap. The mouse passed by and, seeing its
friend struggling haplessly, gnawed the ropes and set the lion free.
The Japanese tell a story about the medieval painter Sesshu, who
was once tied up during his childhood as punishment for idling away
his time with art. He drew pictures of rats by moving his feet in the
sand. The pictures were so vivid that the rats came to life and gnawed
at his bonds. A modern rendering of this theme is Edgar Allan Poe’s
famous story “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Rats had tormented a man
who had been tied up in a dungeon by the Inquisition, but they ultimately
liberated him by gnawing away his bonds.

All of the stories of liberation by rats or mice may also refer to
the emancipation of the soul at death. Because of their preference for
human dwellings, rodents have often been taken for the souls of the
departed. Because of their association with the next world, they are
often credited with clairvoyance. Throughout the world, rats leaving
a home or ship is a sign of impending ruin. In another Greco-Roman
fable traditionally attributed to Aesop, a farmer once noticed that a
mountain was rumbling, rocks were tumbling down, and dust was
spewing from its summit. He decided that the mountain was in labor,
and he called his companions to see what it might give birth to. As
they gazed on in fear and wonder, a tiny mouse finally emerged and
came running down the slope. The story may well have originally referred
to the emergence of the soul from the body. Sometimes a rodent
also represents the separable soul, which can run about while a person
is in a trance or asleep. In the Walpurgis Night episode in the first
part of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust, the protagonist dances
with a young witch at a nocturnal revel, but he is horrified when a rat
leaps out of her mouth and runs away.

This idea of rodents as the souls of human beings seems to underlie
the mysterious tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, which was
recorded in several versions during the Middle Ages. In 1284 the town
of Hamelin in Germany became infested with rats, and the village
council hired a brightly dressed piper to get rid of them. He played a
mysterious tune that made the rats follow him, and he led them into
the Weser River to drown. The Piper disappeared for a while, but he
returned on Saint John’s Day to demand payment. When the village
refused to pay what the Piper wanted, he began to play his pipe
again, and this time the children followed him. A mountain opened
up to receive the procession and closed after it, so the children were
never seen again. The Grimm brothers made the story famous in their
collection of German legends, and Robert Browning, Goethe, and others
have retold it. Various scholars have traced the tale back to the
bubonic plague, to the Children’s Crusade of the Middle Ages, or to a
migration southward to Bohemia. In any case, the image of the Piper
with the children or rats greatly resembles medieval representations
of Death leading the departed in a dance.

There is also at least a very strong association between rodents
and the dead in the legend of Bishop Hatto of Mainz, Germany. There
was a famine, but Hatto continued to dine in luxury and refused to
lower the prices on his ample store of grain. Finally, weary of hearing
the starving people complain, he invited all who lacked bread to assemble
in a huge barn. Then, instead of offering the people food, he
set the barn on fire and burned them to death. Next morning the
bishop rose and saw that rats had eaten his portrait. A servant informed
him that rats had eaten everything in the granary. He looked
out over his lands to see a huge army of rats descending on the palace.
In terror, the bishop fled to an island in the Rhine and locked himself
up in a structure known today as the Mouse Tower. The rats followed,
gnawed through the door, and finally ate the villain alive.
The perspective on rats in East Asia is far more unequivocally
positive. As legend has it, when the Buddha was near death all the animals
came to pay their last respects. The ox was leading the way, and
the rat hitched a ride upon its back. As they reached the pavilion
where the Buddha lay, the rat jumped down, raced ahead, and arrived
before the other animals. As a reward for piety, the Buddha granted
the rat the first position in the Chinese zodiac.
Daikoku, the Buddhist god of wealth, is often depicted holding
a large bale of rice that is being nibbled at by rats. These rodents serve
him as messengers. The amazing fertility of rodents makes them symbolic
of the way money can increase through good business, though
even Daikoku has sometimes had to guard his store from rats.
In the Middle Ages, rats were sometimes familiars of witches or
forms in which sorcerers ran about at night. It was not, however, until
some centuries after the worst episodes of the bubonic plague that
we start to see intense expressions of aversion and disgust for rats, as
people gradually began to suspect their connection with disease. The
reputation of rats took a drastic turn for the worse at the end of the
nineteenth century, when the French missionary Paul Louis Simmond
discovered that bubonic plague had been caused by a bacillus that
was found on fleas carried by rats. This meant that, without being
identified, rats had been responsible for the deaths of millions of people,
more than were killed in all the wars throughout human history.

Bubonic plague may have been around since the advent of humankind,
but the first probable reference to it is in the Bible. In the
early eleventh century B.C., the Philistines had defeated the Hebrews
and taken the Ark of the Covenant. “The hand of Yahweh weighed
heavily on the people of Ashdod [Philistines] and struck terror in
them, afflicting them with tumors” (1 Sam. 5:6). Outbreaks of the
plague gradually became more common and more severe as the
growth of trade increased the density of population during the Roman
Empire. The plague of Justinian in A.D. 531–532 killed tens of millions,
depopulating entire towns and perhaps destroying what remained
of ancient civilization.

But the most terrible outbreak of all was in 1348–1350, when
bubonic plague destroyed more than one-third of the population of
Europe. The people of Europe then aggravated the plague by killing
cats and dogs, animals that they mistakenly believed had caused the
disease but that actually had helped to keep the population of rats in
check. Literature and the arts seem to have gradually anticipated
medical discoveries about the plague, since over the next several centuries
they increasingly depicted rats, especially in packs, as diabolic.
The plague had sometimes been blamed on Jews, and thousands
of them were burned alive in the Middle Ages in consequence. In the
latter nineteenth and twentieth centuries, rats were often used in anti-
Semitic propaganda. Cartoonists made the proverbial “Jewish nose”
appear like the snout of a rat. In the Nazi propaganda film The Eternal
Jew, directed by Fritz Hippler, the migrations of Jews were compared
to the spread of rats across the world. The physician Hans Zinsser,
doubtless thinking of the two world wars, has observed that the conflict
between the brown rat, indigenous throughout Eurasia, and the
black rat, brought to Western Europe on the boats of crusaders, was a
very close equivalent to armed conflict among human beings. In
George Orwell’s novel 1984, the most dreaded fate for the hero Winston
is to be eaten by rats.

But as the rat has been demonized, the mouse, as though in compensation,
has generally grown more beloved. In 1928 Walt Disney,
then a struggling entrepreneur, introduced one of the first animated
films, which starred Mickey Mouse as Steamboat Willie, a captain
who raucously hooted and danced as he steered his ship. As Disney
Studios grew into a giant corporation, Mickey became more subdued
and, in the eyes of his critics, even bland. The Mickey Mouse Club
was founded as part of the television show Walt Disney Presents. It featured
boys and girls wearing large mouse ears, who sang, danced,
and had adventures.

But if mice were identified with cute little kids in entertainment,
the relations with actual rodents remained as troubled as ever. The
strong identification of human beings with rodents continues to produce
not only affection and respect but also hatred and exploitation.
In the United States alone, at least 20 million rodents are killed every
year in experiments. In 1988 the first patent ever was issued for an animal
other than a microorganism, namely, the “onco-mouse,” which
was genetically engineered to develop cancer so it could be used in research.
The scientific findings will, of course, suggest possible cures
for cancer in human beings, but let us hope the exploitative attitudes
are not generalized to people as well.

Selected References

Aesop. The Fables of Aesop. Ed. Joseph Jacobs. New York: Macmillan,
1910.
Baring-Gould, Sabine. Curious Myths of the Middle Ages. London:
Longman’s Green, 1892.
Carlson, Rev. Gergory I. “Horace’s and Today’s Town and Country
Mouse.” Bestia 4 (May 1992): 87–112.
Hendrickson, Robert. More Cunning than Man: A Social History of Rats
and Men. New York: Dorset Press, 1983.
Herodotus. Herodotus (4 vols.). Trans. A. D. Godley. New York: G. P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1926.
Sax, Boria. The Parliament of Animals: Legends and Anecdotes, 1775–1900.
New York: Pace University Press, 1990.
Sun, Ruth Q. The Asian Animal Zodiac. Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 1974.
Zinsser, Hans. Rats, Lice, and History. New York: Macmillan, 1963.

Cats

Cats

The cat is the only animal to have succeeded in domesticating man.
—Marcel Mauss


A cat has enormous eyes that shine especially dramatically when the
rest of its body is shrouded in darkness. Because the pupils of the cat
constantly expand and contract to adjust to the level of light, they
seem like the waxing and waning moon. The lunar cycle, in turn, is
closely bound up with the menstrual cycle of women. Most civilizations,
especially Indo-European ones, have thought of the moon as
feminine (a partial exception is the Germans, for whom the word for
“moon”—Mond—has a masculine gender).

The position of women in patriarchal societies is a bit like that of
cats in homes. In many ways, cats may be subordinate to the master or
mistress of the house. Nevertheless, their manner always suggests confidence
and power. They are able to bestow affection and appreciation
without debasing themselves. Furthermore, the intense attachment that
cats develop to their homes is a bit like the domestic role that women
have often played. Jean Cocteau called the cat “the soul of a home made
visible” (Delort, p. 426). The troubled partnership of cat and dog in
many human homes often resembles that of women and men.
We can also think of the cat within the home as the secret wildness
in every person that survives despite the regimentation of our
public lives. The confident bearing of cats suggests secret knowledge,
which people have both valued and feared.

“When I play with my cat, who
knows but that she regards me more
as a plaything than I do her?” wrote
Michel de Montaigne in “Apology
for Raymond Sebond” (p. 444). Touch
or pet a cat and there may be sparks!
Cats are constantly rubbing their
backs against any available surface,
so static electricity builds up in their
fur. People have always been mystified
by the ability of cats to survive
after falling from tall trees or buildings.
No wonder cats have always
seemed magical.

The curvilinear design of the feline
body and the cat’s rhythmic way
of walking are very feminine. No
doubt this is why so many archaic
goddesses were closely associated
with cats. The Greek Artemis, goddess
of the moon, fled to Egypt and
changed herself into a cat to escape
the serpent Typhon. A panther was
sacred to the goddess Astarte, the
Mesopotamian equivalent of Aphrodite.

She was often portrayed standing upright and riding on her mascot.
The Hindu goddess of birth, Shasti, also used a cat as her mount.
Freya, the Norse goddess of love, rode in a chariot drawn by cats.
Perhaps most important, the Egyptian goddess Bast was depicted
with the head of a cat and the body of a woman. Our word puss
or pussy for cat comes from Pasht, an alternative name for Bastet. The
yearly festival of Bastet, held in autumn, was the most splendid celebration
in all of Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of people would come
on boats, singing and clapping to the music of castanets. They would
offer sacrifices at the temple of Bastet, then feast for several days.
The Egyptians punished unsanctioned killing of a cat with
death. Diodorus Siculus reported that in the middle of the first century
B.C. a member of a Roman delegation to Alexandria accidentally
killed a cat. A crowd stormed his house. Not even fear of Rome could
keep the local citizens from punishing the perpetrator with death.
Several superstitions about cats probably go back to ancient Egypt,
and many people still say that killing a cat brings bad luck.

According to Herodotus, the entire family in an Egyptian home
would go into mourning when a cat died. All members would shave
their eyebrows to show their sorrow. Dead cats were taken to the city
of Bubastis, where they were embalmed and ceremoniously buried.
Hundreds of thousands of mummified remains of cats have been
found in Egyptian tombs. Veneration of the cat eventually reached far
beyond the Mediterranean, and Robert Graves has reported in The
White Goddess that when Saint Patrick arrived in Ireland, there was a
shrine in a cave at Connacht where the oracle was a black cat upon a
chair of silver.

A fable known as “The Cat Maiden,” traditionally attributed to
the Greek Aesop, records a triumph of feminine wiles over masculine
power. The gods and goddesses were arguing about whether it was
possible for a thing to change its nature. “For me, nothing is impossible,”
said Zeus, the god of thunder. “Watch, and I will prove it.” With
that, he picked up a mangy alley cat, changed it into a lovely young
girl, had her dressed in fine clothes, instructed her in manners, and
arranged for her to be married the next day. The gods and goddesses
looked on invisibly at the wedding feast. “See how beautiful she is,
how appropriately she behaves,” said Zeus proudly. “Who could ever
guess that only yesterday she was a cat!” “Just a moment,” said
Aphrodite, the goddess of love. With that, she let loose a mouse. The
maiden immediately pounced on the mouse and began tearing it
apart with her teeth. This fable has been written down in many versions,
some of which date back to the fifth century B.C. in Greece. Perhaps
in some still earlier version, the cat was Aphrodite herself.
“Dick Whittington and His Cat,” an early rags-to-riches tale
from England, shows how cats were valued in the early modern period
by those engaged in trade. The hero, Dick Whittington, was an
impoverished young man in London who had worked hard and managed
to buy a cat, which he lent to a ship’s captain. The captain sold
the cat for a vast fortune to the king of the Moors, who was plagued
by rats. Dick became a wealthy man and was Lord Mayor of London
in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, though the tale
was not written down until much later.

Aboard ships, cats were used as mascots and to catch mice. Virtually
all mariners were male. Sailors sometimes believed the presence
of a woman on board, or even the mention of a woman’s name,
would bring ill luck. The cat, often the only female on the ship, was a
mediator with the feminine powers of the weather and the sea.
Mariners predicted weather by watching the cat. When the cat
washed its face, they would expect rain. When the cat was frisky, they
would expect strong winds. Cats would also know if the ship was
about to sink. Every detail of the cat’s behavior would be closely scrutinized
for portents.

Superstitions about cats are almost as diverse as they are numerous.
Ablack cat, for example, is usually thought of as a sign of bad
luck, while a white cat means good luck. Sometimes, however, this
has been reversed. Wives of mariners in England would keep black
cats as a charm for the safe return of their husbands at sea, a practice
that people in other communities could misinterpret as witchcraft.
In Renaissance Europe, cats were often thought to be the familiars
of witches, and black cats in particular were frequently named as
such in the witch trials. Jean Boille, who was burned as a sorceress at
Vesoul in 1620, claimed to have seen demons and cats participating
together in sexual orgies at the witches’ Sabbath. Apact with the Devil
was sealed with a paw print placed on the body of a witch. The Black
Witch of Fraddan flew through the air at night on an enormous cat. In
the early thirteenth century, the bishop of Paris, Guillaume d’Auvergne,
claimed that Satan appeared to his followers in the form of a
black cat and they had to kiss him beneath the tail.
Diabolic, and sometimes almost as frightening as the Devil himself,
is the King of the Cats in Irish folklore. Sometimes the King is
black and wears a silver chain, but he cannot always be recognized.
Lady Wilde in Legends of Ancient Ireland tells of a man who once, in a
fit of temper, cut off the head of a domestic cat and threw it into a fire.
The eyes of the cat continued to glare at him from within the flames,
and the feline voice swore revenge. A short time later the man was
playing with a pet kitten; suddenly the kitten lunged, bit him on the
throat, and killed him.

When people are fond of certain animals, they assume the animals
will also be beloved by the gods and goddesses, and they offer
them up as sacrifices. The ancient Egyptians may have punished the
killing of a cat outside of a temple with death, but they offered thousands
of cats to Bastet, generally by breaking their necks. Christianity
officially rejected animal sacrifice, but ceremonial killing of cats continued
for thousands of years. Cats were burned alive on Ash Wednesday
in Metz and other Continental cities during the Middle Ages to produce
the ash for the mass. In England, the effigy of Guy Fawkes that
was ceremonially burned every year sometimes contained a cat that
would howl as the flames rose. Cats have been found walled up alive
in the foundations of several medieval buildings, including the Tower
of London. This was the theme of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous horror
story “The Black Cat.” Terrified that his wife was a witch and her black
cat the Devil, the narrator killed his wife and built a wall to conceal her
body. The cat howled from behind the wall until the police came.
Toward the end of the Middle Ages there were few cats left in
Europe. Their absence led to a great increase in rats and diseases, including
bubonic plague. The few cats that had survived the persecutions
came to be highly valued. For the first time, Europeans began to
realize that cats were not only useful but also loyal and affectionate.
Benevolent cats began to appear in fairy tales, though they still usually
seemed to have something a little disturbing about them. In “The
White Cat” by Madame D’Aulnoy, a magical feline guided the hero
through all sorts of trials and tribulations. Finally, the cat cast off its
skin, became a woman, and married him. Then she burned the skin;
after all, would the man want his wife changing shape and casting
spells? Perhaps the magic here is the power of young love, to be put
away as a person enters maturity.

In “Puss in Boots” by Charles Perrault, a cat loyally helps a
young man. To win a fortune for him, however, the two must connive
and deceive everybody else. Master Puss makes up a title, “the Marquis
of Carrabas,” for the young man. Then the cat tells harvesters
that they will be chopped up into little pieces if they don’t tell the king
their land belongs to this marquis. At the request of the cat, the ogre
who really owns the land in question transforms himself into a
mouse. The cat immediately pounces on the mouse, eats him, and
takes over the ogre’s castle for the young man. Finally, the young man
has so much wealth that he can marry the king’s daughter. If the story
were told from another point of view—say, that of the ogre—the
reader could easily take this cat for the Devil. At any rate, it is great
having such a cat on your side.

In folklore, the animals in a household often make up their own
little society, a sort of microcosm. The dog, of course, is among the most
domesticated of animals, while the rodents are completely wild. The
cat is in between. The dog and cat are constantly quarreling and making
up. Sometimes they cooperate to help their master, but the old enmity
can break out at any time. The cat and mouse, by contrast, are
mortal enemies. The mice in the household hardly ever defeat the cat,
though they often manage to get away. The situation is a bit like a troubled
family of human beings, where mother and father quarrel and the
children suffer. In a tale traditionally attributed to Aesop, the mice meet
in council to decide how to protect themselves against the cat. One
mouse proposes that they fasten a bell around the cat’s neck to warn
them when she approached. After the proposal is warmly applauded,
an old mouse stands up and asks, “But who is going to bell the cat?”

Buddhists take a negative view of the cat, though they have seldom
carried this to the extremes we find in the West. The Jatakas, ancient
Buddhist fables, in describing the animals assembled around the
deathbed of Buddha to pay him homage, note that the cat was taking
a nap and didn’t come. According to another traditional tale, Maya
sent a rat with medicine for the ailing Buddha, but the cat killed the
rat, so Buddha perished. Nevertheless, cats were regularly kept as
mousers in households of China, Japan, and other countries of the Far
East. Artists were often fascinated by their alertness, their sensitivity
to subtle sounds and motions. For such a common animal, cats were
notably absent from the Chinese zodiac, in part because they were
closely associated with the element of earth.

For all their differences, Christianity and Buddhism have both
tended to be suspicious of archaic magic. Perhaps this is part of the
reason the cultures that have grown around these religions so often
view the cat, the most magical of animals, with mistrust. Islam may
be a legalistic religion, yet the Koran delights in extravagant tales of
the supernatural; consequently, Muslims have always been lovers of
cats. According to legend, Muhammed once found his cat Meuzza
sleeping on his robe. So as not to disturb his pet, the prophet cut off a
sleeve and put on the rest of the garment. When he returned, Meuzza
bowed to him in gratitude. Mohammed blessed the cat and her descendents
with the ability to fall and land on their feet. When cats enter
a mosque, it means good luck for the community. In one story from
Oman, told by Inea Bushnaq, a cat caught a mouse and was about to
devour it; the mouse begged to be allowed a prayer before death.
When the cat agreed, the mouse suggested that the cat pray as well.
The cat raised its arms and the rat escaped. When a cat rubs its face,
the story concluded, it is remembering the smell of the rat.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the German writer E.
T. A. Hoffmann took on the formidable task of trying to imagine the
feelings of a cat in The Life and Opinions of Kater Murr. A passionate if
somewhat reluctant romantic, Hoffmann felt cats were like those who
work magic in verse or paint. Like artists, cats have mysterious insights.
Like artists, cats often seem vain and impractical. Both cats and
artists have an odd combination of innocence and guile. The cat Murr,
who tells his story, affectionately mocks his master. He has adventures
climbing the rooftops of the town. He reminds the reader in his preface,
“Should anybody be bold enough to raise doubts concerning the
worth of this extraordinary book, he should consider that he confronts
a tom-cat with spirit, understanding, and sharp claws” (vol. 2, p. 11).
Poets always love mystery, and so they also love cats. W. B. Yeats
and T. S. Eliot are among the many who have found inspiration in
cats, but the most famous poem of all about cats is “My Cat Jeoffrey”
by Christopher Smart. The author takes precisely the characteristics
that have impressed people as diabolic and uses them to make the cat
a symbol of Christ:

For he keeps the Lord’s watch in the night against the
adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin
& glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about
the life. (p. 28)
For Smart, the many paradoxes that surround the cat are a proof of
divinity.

The decades immediately following World War II saw a romanticizing
of alienation in the United States and Europe. In the slang of
the Beatnik movement, a “cat” became somebody who preferred the
colorful life of the streets to the mainstream of American society. In
the last few decades of the twentieth century, cats have replaced dogs
as the most popular pet in the United States. Some reasons for this
preference are pragmatic. Cats are smaller, eat less, need less space to
exercise, and are less expensive to care for than dogs. For those who
find the emotional exuberance of dogs embarrassing, cats seem to offer
emotional support without sacrifice of decorum. The relationship
of cats to people can be warm and nurturing yet with a distance of respect,
intimate yet full of riddles.

Selected References

Aesop. The Fables of Aesop. Ed. Joseph Jacobs. New York: Macmillan,
1910, pp. 180–182.
Briggs, Katharine. Nine Lives: The Folklore of Cats. New York: Dorset
Press, 1980.
Bushnaq, Inea, ed. and trans. Arab Folktales. New York: Pantheon, 1986.
Dale, Rodney. Cats in Boots: A Celebration of Cat Illustration through the
Ages. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997.
D’Aulnoy, Marie-Catherine. “The White Cat.” Trans. Minnie Wright.
In The Blue Fairy Book. Ed. Andrew Lang. New York: Dover, 1965,
pp. 157–173.
Delort, Robert. Les animaux ont une histoire. Paris: Éditions du Seuil,
1984.
Graves, Robert. The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993.
Herodotus. Herodotus. (4 vols.). Trans. A. D. Godley. New York: G. P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1926.
Cat 63
Hoffmann, E. T. A. The Life and Opinions of Kater Murr. In Selected Writings
of E. T. A. Hoffmann (2 vols.). Ed. and trans. Leonard J. Kent and
Elizabeth C. Knight. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.
Houlihan, Patrick F. The Animal World of the Pharaohs. New York:
Thames and Hudson, 1996.
Jacobs, Joseph, ed. “Dick Whittington and His Cat.” In English Fairy
Tales. New York: Dover, 1967, pp. 167–178.
Montaigne, Michel de. “Apology for Raymond Sebond.” In The Complete
Essays of Montaigne (2 vols.). Trans. Donald M. Frame. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1959, vol. 1, pp. 428–561.
Perrault, Charles. Perrault’s Fairy Tales. Trans. A. E. Johnson. New
York: Dover, 1969.
Poe, Edgar Allan. Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. New
York: Doubleday, 1966.
Smart, Christopher. “My Cat Jeoffrey.” In Animal Poems, ed. John
Hollander. New York: Knopf, 1994, pp. 27–31.
Lady Wilde (Speranza). Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions
of Ireland: With Sketches of the Irish Past. Galway: O’Gorman,
1971 (1888).