Rat Wars

Film Summary

duration26:00 mins
categoryPeople & Places / Wildlife
locationAsia

Brief Summary

In a land where food is a scarcity to begin with, farmers’ crops are spoiled or ruined by hordes of rats that take over during the harvest. In urban cities rats are collected daily and tested for plague, a disease that killed over 12 1/2 million people in India nearly a century ago. Numerous attempts to poison the rats has resulted in the evolution of a rat immune to modern poisons and too clever to be caught in a trap. And yet, throughout all the havoc they create, rats are exalted in the Hindu religion. Celebrated as the caretaker of the elephant god, Ganesh, rats are offered sweets, grains, and milk. In an effort to comprehend the rat paradox in India, National Geographic explores the curious relationship between rats and man when it follows the rats’ migration from village to city, from the farmers’ crops to city dwellings, and from rats being fed to being prepared as food when we look at RAT WARS - the story of rats and man in India.

Year Filmed: 1994

Prod. Code: 92A94

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