If you have ever heard the scampering of rodents that you did not bring home from the pet store in your attic or basement, you know that rats can be bad news. After all, we all hear the horror stories about how rats (as well as field mice, raccoons and other rodents) can chew through wires, and carry fleas which in turn carry all manner of diseases. As a general rule, the people who have rats would just as soon have them be dead as soon as possible. But what about the rights of those rats to continue living? They are living creatures, as well. Don’t they have just as much of a right to life as any other life forms do?
Indeed they do. While killing rats is not technically illegal, it is not the ideal circumstance from a humanitarian point of view. Considering the fact that rats have the right to life, we really do not have any particular right to kill them, when more humane methods exist of ridding ourselves of these nonviolent pests. After all, there are such things as glue traps, which merely capture the rat without causing it any particular harm. Once we find the creature, struggling and afraid but still alive, we can then take it outside to let it be a rat in the world where rats belong.
However, it is unlikely that rats will ever become an endangered species, as their litters are simply too large and too frequent to be affected by even the most determined predator species. The notion of rats one day appearing on the endangered species list may at first seem to be something straight out of a satire. But keep in mind that the populations of all endangered species were once thought to be innumerable and untouchable. Anything which lives in a definite quantity may be slowly and certainly wiped out, if we don’t accept it has a right to live.