Tidying Up

Long as my last post was, there were still ideas I wanted to present, as well as items related to it that came up after I hit the "publish" button.

You may be relived to know the ideas that didn't make the final edit have now slipped my mind, but not the things that came up out of the blue.

The first was a query to Quora, the random question and answer website. The question that caught my eye, was whether Hitler could speak English: 

Here's part of the answer, emphasis mine: 

German was the only language he was fluent in. In a very typical Hitler manner, he refused to study any other languages. His excuse? He believed he would only butcher the language and embarrass himself. Maybe this is true. Maybe he would have sounded absolutely ridiculous trying to pronounce the word “squirrel” and nobody would have taken him seriously ever again. 

If you recall, my last post was inspired by the question: "why does the squirrel inspire such funny names that are hard to pronounce in so many languages?"

Of course, there is absolutely nothing funny about Hitler which is why this response is so amusing. Adolph Hitler bringing up an animal so innocent and amusing as an Eichhörnchen, not to mention him attempting to say it in a foreign language, is so out of character for him, that the idea alone is hilarious. And the thought of him butchering the word squirrel causing him to never again be taken seriously, and by extension causing the downfall of the Third Reich, is something straight out of Monty Python.

There in one sentence is proof that I was on to something.

Hitler may never have brought up a squirrel in any language including his own in public, but he certainly talked an awful lot about vermin, many of whom are related to the squirrel. In my piece, I also wrote quite a bit about the squirrel's close cousin, the rat.

On the day I published the piece, during an unexpected trip to visit my sick mother, (she's better, thanks), I turned on the car radio in the middle of an episode of the NPR series This American Life. The particular episode, all one hour of it, was devoted to the rat. The segment I came in on was about a guy who during the Pandemic, became obsessed with keeping rats as pets, and at one point I believe had sixteen of them roaming about his apartment at the same time. In part of that segment, the narrator described in detail, scientific studies of rat behavior and it turns out, as the Ancient Chinese could have told you, that rats are very smart. 

I haven't gotten the chance to hear the entire episode but plan to do so tomorrow on my New Years Day holiday.

But you can beat me to it by clicking this link. 

Something else I alluded to in the post, but really didn't discuss in any depth, was the subject of Artificial Intelligence. If you read the piece, you probably noticed that much of what I wrote referenced queries I made of ChatGPT and other AI tools. In fact, the very premise of the piece, how our common names of animals reflect the roles they play in our lives, was inspired by ChatGPT's response to a my specific question about why the cute furry tree dwelling rodent inspires such funny names in so many languages, including English.

You can read the post to see verbatim the chat bot's response.

I can imagine many of you might be put off by my reliance on AI in putting together that post. 

Frankly, that was my intent. 

Unlike the subject of rats and especially the subject of squirrels, after all the horrific wars and the impact of the new world order caused by the extreme shift to the right on the pendulum of public opinion, Artificial Intelligence has been the news topic du jour globally. And much of the reporting is about how AI is going to change the world, mostly for the worse.

Earlier this year I wrote a piece in this space called CheatGPT? As the title suggests, the piece questioned how much of the use of AI constitutes cheating, especially in the academic setting. 

There is of course no question that having ChatGPT write a term paper is cheating, but as I argued, the person doing this is only cheating him or herself, as the purpose of education is learning something, or isn't it? 

AI, I insisted, is a tool which like all groundbreaking innovations from time immemorial, could be put to either good or bad use. Like a hammer for example that can be used to build homes, or it could be used to bash in someone's skull.

But this is a very simplistic viewpoint as historian/philosopher Yuval Noah Harari asserts:

The most important thing to know about AI, is that it is not a tool, like all previous human inventions; it is an agent. And agent in the sense it can make decisions independently of us. It can invent new ideas, it can learn and change by itself.

Also cited by critics are AI's effect on the environment, (as AI systems require tremendous amount of energy and with that, natural resources), and the automation of jobs. 

Beyond these existential threats to society and life as we know it are what AI has the potential to do and in fact is already doing to us, especially to our minds. One of the criticisms I hear all the time is that AI is leading to the ultimate destruction of critical thinking. 

Along those lines, here's an article in the Atlantic I came across the other day. It's called:  Aphoristic Intelligence Beats Artificial Intelligence with the subtitle: It’s not just okay for some things in life to be hard—it’s essential.

The article was s adapted from James Geary’s book, The World in a Phrase. : A Brief History of the Aphorism.

Aphorisms are little statements of wisdom that have been handed down through the generations, or could very well be if they are written or uttered today.

A good aphorism requires thought and reflection, rather than being advice that states the obvious. They're calls to action, not feel good assurances that encourage passivity. Here's the money quote from the article:

In some ways, aphorisms are perfectly suited to our era of short-form communication. They’re concise, catchy, easily consumable. But so much of our discourse, online and IRL, is anti-aphoristic—rage bait, trash talk, knee-jerk toxicity, gauzy affirmations, hashtag claptrap. And now comes that upstart other AI, artificial intelligence, promising to reduce our cognitive loads to zero by proffering frictionless friendships and sycophantic agreeability, and doing all of our creative thinking for us.

Aphorisms are different. They are the antithesis of the half-baked hot take and nothing like the machine-made flattery that’s now permeating so many informational environments. A platitude is a placebo for the mind; an aphorism is a wake-up call. Aphorisms provoke debate; they don’t promote dogma. Though they’re short, aphorisms spur considered reflection, not Pavlovian partisanship. At a time when polarization is so amped up, aphorisms can serve as psychological circuit breakers, interrupting our comfortable assumptions and prodding us to open our minds, unclench our fists, and think for ourselves.

Ah yes that upstart other, AI. Much of what is said about it is true and we should heed the warnings from Harari and so many others about the dangers and pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence. 

At the same time, maybe we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, that is, being so wrapped up in in our anti-AI dogma that we reject it outright. After all, where is the critical thinking in that?

In my book, the best way to prevent Artificial Intelligence from living up to all the dark predictions is this: treat it with critical thinking. That's what I tried to accomplish in my last post. 

Bringing it all full circle, the original, original inspiration of that last post is the German word for squirrel, Eichhörnchen. I already knew the word but it was recently brought to my attention this month in a little book called German Short Stories, written by Sven Sebastian. The book is intended for adult learners of the language and is according to its author, written in the B1, or early intermediate level, pretty much where I'm at. Originally, I thought this book was a little basic for my needs but eventually realized that it was perfect as I could understand virtually everything except for certain key phrases which were conveniently translated on the opposite page. 

The stories tend to be in the vein of children's stories as all of them feature animals and are told in a style similar to Aesop's fables. 

Nevertheless, it's a lovely book.

One of these stories naturally featured a squirrel and was titled Das vergessenes Eichhörnchen, (The Forgetful Squirrel) Aren't they all? Other stories include Die Marathon-Schnecke (The Marathon Snail), Der Wanderkaktus (The Wandering Cactus), and Die Stadt die Tiere, (The Animal City).

But hands down my favorite story in the book is called the Die poetische Brieftaube (The Poetic Mail Pigeon). The hero of this story is Paula, the pigeon of the title, who has a job working for a company that employs pigeons to deliver advertising flyers to people's homes. She hated the job but hey, a job's a job, even for a pigeon I guess.

One day Paula delivered one of her flyers to the home of a retired school teacher. When he got the ad for this or that, he looked at Paula with a sad face and said: "Oh little bird, you fly all over the city every day, couldn't you for once bring something that warms the heart?

Taking what he said to heart, the next day instead of heading to work to collect her leaflets, Paula flew to the public library. There she found a book of poetry. (This next part will be disturbing to all my librarian friends so continue reading at your own risk). She took the book off the shelf and ripped out some pages containing inspirational words to deliver to her clients. 

To the retired school teacher she delivered a page with this splendid aphorism:

"Wege entstehen dadurch, dass man sie geht."

"Paths are made by walking them."

Pretty good words to close out 2025 don't you think?

Happy New Year!

I Smell a Rat

One of my New Year's resolutions last year was to minimize the number of posts devoted to politics. Looking through my archive on the right, I see I first broke that resolution on Inauguration Day, January 20. In fact, the first three posts last year were about politics. It seems I just can't help it, the current political situation in this country and the rest of the world these days is simply a subject too ripe with ideas for new posts. To put it mildly.

With that in mind, you may think given the title of this post, what follows is yet another screed against the current administration, but I assure you it is not. The rat in the title is not metaphorical but quite literal. Yes dear reader, this post is about rats and their rodent cousins.

But wait, before you stop reading, that's not all, it's also about other animals and their relationship to us, that is we animals of the species Homo sapiens.  

And what brings it all together is my favorite topic to write about these days, after baseball anyway, that is to say language, with a little stuff about AI thrown in.

Let's see if I can tie it all together.

To paraphrase Bette Davis from the classic 1950 film All About Eve:

Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

OK here goes.

The inspiration for this post is the German word for one of the aforementioned cousins of the species Rattus norvegicus, see if you can guess which one, and extra points if you can pronounce the word.

Eichhörnchen

The German language gets a lot of grief. Someone I know recently declared that German just sounds angry to her. Of course, that's true if the only person you've ever heard speaking it is Hitler.

If you unfortunately are of that opinion, for a real eye opener please check this out, the opening scene from one of my favorite movies of all time *(1) featuring a poem by Peter Handke. 

Or this, in my opinion hands down the most beautiful Christmas carol ever set to music. *(2)

Merry Christmas by the way!

German is also known for its ridiculously long words like this one:

Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften.

Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften isn't the longest German word. But you won't find words like this in a dictionary, as they are combinations of words that describe a single entity. Where English describing the same thing would separate the words, in this case "insurance companies that provide legal protection", German eliminates the spaces between the words, which when you think of it, kind of makes sense as the term insurance companies that provide legal protection, does indeed constitute a single entity. On the other hand for me at least, it's easier to read the words separated by spaces instead of this: insurancecompaniesthatprovidelegalprotection,

But even German words that you do find in a dictionary can be impressive for their length. Consider the German word for speed limit: Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung.

OK that's really two words, but the German for those two words, Geschwindigkeit (speed) and begrenzung (limit) are by themselves formidable.

Like Geschwindigkeitbegrenzung, Eichhörnchen is a compound word. "Eich" on its own means oak, as in the tree. Without the umlaut, "Hörn" means the same thing in English, and "Chen" at the end of a word indicates a diminutive. So together they mean. "little oak horn".

Figured it out yet?

When all is said and done, Eichhörnchen is a silly word for a very common thing, even German people would concur as the multitude of YouTube videos made by Germans on the subject would attest.

But German isn't the only language with a silly, hard to pronounce word for this particular animal. 

The French word for Eichhörnchen is Ècureuil, which in my book is even harder to pronounce than Eichhörnchen, as are most French words.

But perhaps there is no sillier, harder-to-pronounce word describing this cousin of the rat than the English version.

That word?

Squirrel.

If your immediate response to that last statement is "what's so hard to pronounce about squirrel?", then English must be your mother tongue, and you've been saying the word all your life.

For people learning English as a second language on the other hand, the word squirrel is a minefield filled with foreign consonant clusters, unfamiliar vowels and excessive articulations all packed within two mere syllables, sometimes only one, (like the American version that rhymes with girl), which makes the successful pronunciation of squirrel, a feat of vocal gymnastics. 

It turns out that words across the spectrum for cute, furry tree dwelling rodents with bushy tails are fairly divergent from language to language, complex when compared to words describing other animals, and are often difficult to pronounce.

Why is that?

That's what I wondered the other day when I turned to the genie inside my pocket, ChatGPT, and asked the app why this particular animal inspires such strange words in different languages. Rather then telling me to "get a life" as some of my human acquaintances would, ChatGPT, in one of its typical obsequious responses began with: "Ahh--excellent question."

I always fall for that.

Then it gave me a list of reasons, some of which made sense, while some were a little dubious when digging a little deeper, But the first was particularly enlightening:

Squirrels weren't major cultural animals, therefore their names drifted freely.

ChatGPT goes on:

Animals that are culturally important get short, stable old words:

• English: cow, pig, dog, deer
• German:  Kuh, Schwein, Hund, Reh
• French: vache, porc, chien, cerf

But squirrels?

They were never domesticated, hunted much, used for transport or mythologically central. This means their names were:

• less stable
• more susceptible to sound changes
• more likely to drift, lengthen, or become cutesy/diminutive

Languages don't "protect" them from becoming phonetic messes. 

We humans love to classify things. One of the most brilliant classification systems ever devised was the one invented by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in the eighteenth century, the modern system of classifying all living organisms.

Linneaus' system classifies organisms biologically, based on shared characteristics and evolutionary relationships. The system is divided into categories ranging from broad, Kingdom (plants, animals, fungi, etc), to general, Class (mammal, bird, reptile, etc) to specific, Species (Sugar Maple, Shitake Mushroom, Human Being, etc.), 

Until this week however, I had never thought of a system that classified organisms based upon their "cultural importance." You learn something new every day.

What dawned on me, is that the difference between these two systems of classification define our naming systems for living things: the common names which vary from culture to culture, and the scientific names which are rigorously consistent as well as universally accepted. 

So the words:

• cow, 
• pig, 
• dog,
• deer, 
• and of course squirrel, 

the English common names for a handful of mammals, speak at least as much about our  relationship with these animals as the animals themselves. Consequently the names we give them vary from language to language.

Very messy.

While their scientific counterparts:

• Bos taurus, 
• Sus scrofra domesticus, 
• Canus lupis familiaris, 
• Odocoileus virginianus. 
• and Sciurus carolinensis,  *(3)

the naming convention invented by Carl Linneaus, (always italicized, Genus first, capitalized, followed by species in lower case, followed if necessary by a subspecies) point to specific animals in relationship to other animals, with little regard to our feelings for them. 

Most important, there is a unique scientific name for each species. 

Just the facts ma'am.

Much as biologists classify living organisms. linguists classify languages using similar hierarchies of categories, including the category Family. Linguists assume that members of the same family of languages are all descended from a single prototype language. The family to which English belongs is the Indo-European Family, which as the name implies, includes most of the languages of India as well as Europe, but not all. And the prototype language that these languages are likely descendants of has the tasty acronym PIE, for Prototype Indo European, which linguists think existed around 6,000 years ago. 

Just like the leftovers from this past Thanksgiving's dinner, there are no extant remnants of this PIE, as it existed about one millennium before the invention of writing. We know it through the comparison and reconstruction of roots of common words in the extant Indo European language family. Linguists believe that PIE evolved into Sanskrit, Ancient Greek and Latin, which in turn evolved over time into the current language members of the IE family, diverging into various branches including the Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Germanic, Slavic, Hellenic, and Romance languages, among others.

It turns out that the English word squirrel has ancient roots. According to the sources I found, it goes back at least to the ancient Greek word σκίουρος" (skiouros), which like Eichhörnchen, is a compound noun. Skiouros (for convenience sake I'll stick here to the Latin spelling) consists of the roots skia (tail) and ouros (shadow), describing the animal's most conspicuous feature. Then Latin borrowed  the word turning it into Scurius, the word Linnaeus used to define the genus to which the nearly 300 different species of squirrels belong.

The part of the linguistic family tree on which English sits is the Germanic branch. In reality however, about sixty percent of all English words come from French, which itself sits on the Romance branch. If you're not familiar with your British history, this is a result of the Norman Conquest of Britain which began in 1066. As the Francophone conquerors took over much of the country, so did their language and today if you're an English speaker without a trace of knowledge of French and German, you're likely to be able to recognize more words from a French text than from the same text in German. 

The German that does remain in English mostly consists of words for basic things like body parts such as Hand, Arm and Finger which are the same in both languages, although pronounced differently and capitalized as all nouns are in German. Some German body part words that come close enough to English to be understood are Fuß (pronounced foos), Schulter and Knie.

There are also German animal names you'd recognize despite the difference in spelling like Maus, Fisch, Elefant and Kamel. Probably close enough are Bär, Fuchs and Kuh, while Löwe (lion) may be a bit of a stretch, but is still related. English doesn't typically use Schwein and Hund for pig and dog respectively but their equivalent words do come up from time to time so we can probably figure out what they mean. 

But we don't use Eichhörnchen. 

While it may not be immediately apparent, the  English word Squirrel is related to that silly French word we learned a little while ago, Ècureuil, The relation is more apparent when you consider that Ècureuil itself evolved over the ages having dropped the "s" in Escurueil. Adapted into the Anglo-French language that would become the basis for Modern English, the word became Esquirel, before eventually dropping the first vowel.

It may occur to you as it did me that since the French language didn't come to Britain until the 11th century, there must have been esquirels in Britain before then, there were, so they had to have had a name for them, which they did. That name was Acweorna. You may wonder why the Brits substituted the French inspired esquirel for the Germanic acweorna. I'll have to get back to you on that one.

According to ChatGPT, the words for squirrel in the languages of Europe (this post is already too long so I'll limit this discussion to Europe), mostly come from four different origins, each with its own description of the animal. 

We've already seen "little oak horn" which is found in many of the Germanic languages, English being an exception. Incidentally, the horn part describes the ears of European squirrels, (see the photo below). 

In addition to Eichhörnchen in German:

• In Dutch it's Eekhoorn.
• In Swedish it's Ekorre.
• In Norwegian it's Ekorn.
• In Danish it's Egern

and so on...

And we've seen there's "shadow tail" which many Romance languages as well as English inherited from the Greek.

In addition to Ècureuil in French:

• In Italian it's Scoiattolo.
• In Catalan it's Esquirol.
• And of course in English it's Squirrel.

Interestingly enough, in Modern Greek, the word  σκίουρος still exists unchanged, exactly as it did in the ancient language, unusual for names of animals.

The three other major Romance languages go in different directions:

In Spanish, the word for squirrel is the relatively humble Ardilla, which comes not from Greek through Latin but from a word dating back to the pre-Roman conquest of Iberia. Portuguese follows suit with Ardiha.

Romanian goes in a completely different direction, choosing the third  major European category defining the animal which comes from the western Slavic languages. According to ChatGPT, rather than a visual description, the origin of the word with its repetition of the first two syllables is possibly a play on the chattering sound that squirrels make. However another theory has the root coming from the proto Slavic word for climb. Take your pick.

In Romanian, the word for squirrel is Veveriţă.

A Transylvanian Veveriţă
Photo by Laura Vălean

• In Czech it's Veverka.
• In Slovak it's Veverička
• In Polish it's Wiewiórka.
• In Belarussian it's Вавёрка (vaviorka)

and so on...

The fourth European category for describing squirrels comes from the Eastern Slavic languages whose words describe the white underbelly of the animal, consequently their words for squirrel are based upon the word white, белый (belki) in Russian.

The word for squirrel in Russian is Белка (belka).

• In Ukrainian it's Білка (Bilka).
• ChatGPT claimed the Belarusian word for squirrel was Белка, the same as the Russian, but other sources I found say otherwise, see above. So I corrected ChatGPT and it admitted the error of its ways. For a geeky blast of fun, if you have the app, ask it what's the Belarusian word for squirrel. If it answers "Вавёрка", you can thank me.

There are other European words for squirrel that don't neatly fit into any of these categories but I think I've already belabored the point and you get the idea.

So how do the naming conventions for squirrel differ from those of other common animals? And given its tendency to err, are the assumptions of ChatGPT correct?

To test it, I thought I'd select three very different animals with three very similar English names, the cat, the bat and as promised, the rat.

Sounds like a Dr. Seuss story, didn't he write a book called the Bat in the Hat? I think so. Or was it the Rat in the Hat?

Anyway, using ChatGPT's criteria for rating "animal cultural importance", the cat, unlike the squirrel, is an animal of tremendous cultural significance, just ask our cat Ziggy. 

Our relationship with cats began about 10,000 years ago some archeologists believe, around the dawn of agriculture. They say that humans didn't domesticate the cat, rather it domesticated itself, as the grain that humans cultivated attracted rodents, which in turn attracted cats. The cats ate the rodents who were eating the grain, forming a symbiotic relationship between cats and humans, and the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship.

Cats were venerated by the Ancient Egyptians 3,000 years ago, and by crazy cat ladies today, checking off the status of "mythologically central" in ChatGPT's list of traits box marking cultural significance. Come to think of it, the only category on that list that doesn't apply to cats, is the part about being used for transportation.

Oh wait, I stand corrected: 

Therefore I propose that with the possible exception of dog, no animal has more "cultural significance" than the cat. Well maybe one other, continue reading.

And according to ChatGPT, animals with tremendous cultural significance get "short, stable names."

Let's see if that's true, using (for the reasons explained above) selected languages in the European branches of the IE tree:

Romance languages:

• French: Chat
• Italian: Gatto
• Potuguese: Gato
• Romanian: Pisică  (what the hell?)
• Spanish: Gato

Germanic Languages:

• Danish: Kat
• Dutch: Kat
• English: Cat
• German: Katze
• Swedish: Katt

Slavic Languages:

• Belorusian: кошка (Kochka)
• Bulgarian: котка (Kotka)
• Czech: Kočka (Kochka)
• Polish: Kot
• Russian: кот (Kot)

With the exception of one outlier, Romanian in this limited sample, there is a clear relationship between the common names for the species Felis cattus (and there it is in Latin), that transcends the IE language branches which is a very strong indication that the word has roots that go all the way back to PIE or even earlier.

And the fact that most cultures decided to keep the word underscores the significance of the animal to their cultures.

So far so good.

Now let's try Bat:

Romance languages:

French: Chauve-souris

Italian: Pipistrello

Potuguese: Morsego

Romanian: Liliac

Spanish: Murciélago

Germanic Languages:

Danish: Flagermus

Dutch: Vleermuis

English: Bat

German: Fledermaus

Swedish: Fladdermus

Slavic Languages:

Belorusian: Кажан,(Kažan)

Bulgarian: Прилеп, (Prilep)
Czech: Netopýr
Polish: Nietoperz
Russian: Летучая мышь, (Letuchaya mysh')

Bat names on the other hand, with the exception of the Germanic branch are all over the place, even more than squirrel names. Does this mean bats are even less "culturally important" than squirrels? 

Like squirrels, bats don't make good pets, they're not very tasty (at least from what I hear), and don't provide much in the way of transportation, unless I suppose you're a flea.

But they more than make up for all that in terms of mythological centrality.

Consider the following, ripped off another AI source:

• Bats are often associated with darkness and the underworld in various cultures.
• In Chinese mythology, bats symbolize good fortune and happiness.
• Native American tribes view bats as symbols of transformation and rebirth.
• In European folklore, bats are linked to witchcraft and the supernatural.
• Some African myths depict bats as messengers between the living and the dead.
• In Mesoamerican cultures, bats are associated with fertility and the night.

Like squirrel names, bat names are largely compound words describing physical attributes of the animal. My second favorite of these is the wonderfully descriptive, if not biologically accurate German, Fledermaus, or in English, "fluttering mouse." Die Fledermaus is also the name of a famous opera by Johann Strauss Jr. As it's the holidays, here's a link to its jubilant overture.

The Slavic names listed above also play off the riff of flying mouse, culturally independent from each other. I guess that shouldn't be too surprising when you consider how unusual bats are in relation to other mammals. It's not hard to imagine the first human of every culture to lay eyes on one and saying to his partner, "Look Shiela, a flying mouse!"

The Spanish name for bat originally came from the Latin Mus caeculus meaning "little blind mouse." Over the centuries as Classical Latin spread throughout the Roman Empire, it was absorbed by the different populations and morphed into Vulgar Latin (or Latin of the people), which further morphed into what we now call the Romance languages. 

In the case of mus caeculus according to ChatGPT, "sounds shifted, vowels weakened, and the phrase became a single lexical unit." The shift was so radical that eventually Spanish speakers no longer heard the word as little blind mouse, but just plain Murciélago, for my money, the coolest bat name around.

Over in France, bats aren't blind, they're bald. Why bald? One theory for the French word for bat is that the word was originally Chouette-souris meaning owl mouse, which makes way more sense, although as my wife just pointed out, owls eat mice. Anyway, according to the theory, at some point Chouette was replaced, perhaps inadvertently with Chauve (bald) which is the moment when the French bats all lost their hair. 

And in Italy, Pipistrllo which certainly gives Murciélago a run for its money on the coolness scale, comes from the Classical Latin word for bat, Vespertillo, literally "evening bird". From there, courtesy of Google AI, Verpertillo evolved

through Old Italian vipistrello, with a possible influence from pipistrella (a small cape/overcoat), suggesting a "winged little creature" or "cloaked one" meaning.

Here's my rather uneducated take: perhaps because of their uniqueness, intriguing mysterious nature and mythological significance, bats capture the human imagination more than most other animals, which is why they inspire such cool names, just as squirrels, by comparison rather playful and silly animals, inspire playful, silly names.

It's just a thought.

OK the moment you've all been waiting for, on to Mr. Rat:

Romance languages:

French: Rat

Italian: Ratto

Potuguese: Rato

Romanian: Sobolan

Spanish: Rata

Germanic Languages:

Danish: Rotte

Dutch: Rat

English: Rat

German: Ratte

Swedish: Råtta

Slavic Languages:

Belorusian: пацук (pacuk)

Bulgarian: плъх ,(plŭkh)
Czech: Krysa
Polish: Szczur
Russian: крыса (Krysa)

The etymology of the various words for rat is super interesting, as of course is the animal itself.

Seriously.

Given the information presented above, if you just consider the Romance and Germanic branch lists with their consistent names for the animal, (with the exception of the typically contrarian Romanian), you could reasonably assume that the word rat has roots going back to PIE. But when you look at the Slavic words, there is no relation at all.

So what gives?

It turns out that the Latin name Rattus, came on the scene relatively late, perhaps in the third or fourth Century CE (AD if you prefer). Before that, Latin didn't distinguish between mice and rats, their word Mus sufficed for both. All that changed as the Black Rat, Rattus rattus, originally native to the Indian subcontinent, began to appear in Europe as trade routes were established with Asia. Uninvited, the rats hitched rides aboard ships headed westward and planted stakes in Europe.

The Black rat quickly proved itself to be an unwelcome guest wherever it landed.

Here's a quote from a fascinating book I read several years ago called: Rats: Obeservations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants, by Robert Sullivan:

Rats generally wreak havoc on food supplies, destroying or contaminating crops and stored foods everywhere, Some estimates suggest that as much as one third of the world's food supply is destroyed by rats. 

I probably don't need to mention that serious as the problem rats caused the food supply, it got much worse. Again, quoting Robert Sullivan, rats...

carry diseases that we know of and they may carry diseases that we do not know of-in just the past century, rats have been responsible for the death of more than ten million people...

And that's just in the last century. In the Middle Ages, the Bubonic Plague pandemic (the Black Death), caused by the Yersenia pestus bacterium transmitted by fleas who hitched rides (also uninvited) aboard the backs of rats, took perhaps 100 million human lives, over one third of the population of Europe, during the course of two years.

Small wonder they had to come up with a new word to distinguish these intruders from their meeker cousins. No one knows exactly where the name Rattus comes from, some speculate it was a slang term invented by sailors, just like aargh and shiver-me-timbers. And as the rat problem persisted throughout much of Europe, the name rat spread along with the animal.

It is speculated that the name rat didn't catch on in Eastern Europe however as there, local names already existed that separated mice from rats.

 
The Black rat was eventually displaced in Europe by the larger Brown Rat, Rattus norwegicus,*(4) originally native to China, which first arrived in Europe in the 18th Century. Ironically, the displacement by the larger rats coincided with the end of the major plague waves leading some researchers to believe that the two events were related as the Brown rats' preference for the subterranean life led to less exposure to humans meaning fewer transmissions of the disease. 

Other scientists however speculate that rats' contribution to the spread of the pandemic was vastly exaggerated in the first place. *(5)

Regardless, our relationship with the pesky rodent has been strained to say the least. It's probably safe to say that rats are among the most vilified animals in existence. On the other hand, unlike bats and squirrels, rats are domesticated both as pets (rat fanciers insist they make fantastic pets), and perhaps more significantly as laboratory animals.

So where do rats fall on the "cultural importance scale"? 

• Domesticated? yes.
• Hunted much? yes, in parts of Asia and Africa where eating the animal is not considered taboo.
• Used for transportation? well like bats, only for fleas so I'll have to give this one a no, at least for humans.
• Mythologically central? Absolutely. Just for starters, the first animal on the Chinese zodiac is the rat. *(6)

And while it might fall under the category domesticated, ChatGPT's cultural relevance scale doesn't really mention work animals like dogs, oxen, sheep and a whole slew of other animals whose services we have historically depended upon. As such, their service to us as research animals (ethically challenging as that may be), makes rats to this day invaluable to human beings. 

Considering these categories, I'd say that rats are indeed culturally important animals. And when you add into the equation the negative traits (which as we've seen may be a bit exaggerated) that have affected human civilization for millennia, I'd say that rats are off-the-chart culturally significant.

So take that, cats, who are nowhere to be found in the Chinese zodiac.

CODA

To be honest, while it is entirely relatable, I'm not crazy about ChatGPT's use of the term "cultural importance" when it comes to describing animals, because it seems to convey a value judgement. That is to say an animal that is not "culturally important" must therefore be unimportant. Of course this defines human relationships with animals from time immemorial, in other words, if we're able to exploit an animal for our needs, it must be important. 

On the other hand, it works both ways. As we've seen, it was the cats who originally exploited humans. While there was mutual benefit in the relationship, this article claims that humans didn't really see a need to exploit cats in kind until the Egyptians did it, some 7,000 years later. 

It could also be argued that human exploitation of animals works to the animals' benefit, at least in a Darwinian sense. It may not work out so well for the individual, such as animals raised for food, but the relationship with humans all but insures the survival of their species. That's the subject for another post, or perhaps an entire book.

But in the grand scheme of things, no animal is unimportant as each and every species plays a role in the ecology of the planet. Consider that every time you stand before a mighty oak tree in the forest and realize that tree is there because at some time maybe a couple hundred years ago, a squirrel forgot where he buried his prized acorn. 

Or consider when you're sitting outside enjoying a lovely summer evening, that a single brown bat can consume up to 1,000 mosquitos per hour..*(7)

And beyond their indisputably crucial role in the ecosystems in which they are native, (messed up only when humans get involved), if you or a loved one has ever been treated for a disease that may have otherwise had serious consequences, you can more than likely thank a lab rat for its contribution to finding a cure. 

In short, no animal, plant or any living thing for that matter, is insignificant, ever.

NOTES:

*(1) Himmel über Berlin, (Wings of Desire) directed by Wim Wenders.

*(2) Es ist ein Ros entsprungen set to music composed by Michael Preatorius.

*(3) Cow, the female gender of Bos taurus is a word often used in contemporary English to describe Cattle of both genders. Why that is, is probably a worthwhile subject for an entire post.

Sus scofra domesticus and Canus lupis familiaris as their names imply, are the domesticated cousins of  Sus scofra (the wild boar) and Canis lupis (the grey wolf) which have evolved enough through their domestication to be considered sub species of their natural, i.e.: untouched by human hands cousins in the wild.

The common name "deer" is very broad, encompassing about fifteen genera. Odocoileus virginianus is the scientific name for the most common deer found in the Americas, the White-tailed deer.

Squirrel is an even broader term encompassing over 50 genera. The common English name for the species Sciurus carolinensis, Eastern grey squirrel, one without the big horny ears, is the most common squirrel in the United States. 

*(4) The Brown rat, among other things, is often referred to as the Norwegian rat because it was originally assumed the species arrived in Great Britain aboard ships hauling lumber from Norway. The English naturalist John Berkenhout bought into this myth, thereby preserving it for the ages as he's the one who christened the species with its scientific (binomial) name, Rattus norwegicus. So my assumption that scientific names have nothing to do with human feelings about living organisms, is itself a fallacy.The scientists who gave them their scientific names, were only human after all.

*(5) It should be noted that rats also die from exposure to the Yersenia pestus bacteria. Typical outbreaks of Bubonic Plague were proceeded by the discovery of large die-offs of the rodent. With their hosts dead, the fleas carrying the bacterium search for other hosts including humans. There were no such notable recordings of rodent die-offs before the Black Death suggesting that the pandemic had sources other than rats. 

*(6) Here's an assessment of the rat from a website I found on Chinese astrology:

Ranking the first in the Chinese zodiac, rat represents wisdom. Personality traits for the people born in the year of the Rat are intelligent, charming, quick-witted, practical, ambitious, and good at economizing as well as social activities. The weaknesses are that the Rats are likely to be timid, stubborn, wordy, greedy, devious, too eager for power and love to gossip.

*(7) There's a killjoy in every room. This article claims to debunk the "myth" concerning bats and mosquitos. But the gist of the article is that mosquitos only account for a small amount a bat's diet, and that bats alone are not the "solution" to the mosquito problem.  What the article does not deny is the number of mosquitos consumed by bats, and it also fails to mention that without bats, there would certainly be far more mosquitos.