Rat-a-Tat Tat
What's in a name? Let's find out!
Howdy! It’s Joey, back with more Fun Fact Friyay. Today’s facts might seem like a tall tale (or tail), but it’s absolutely true.
The black rat, also known as a roof rat, ship rat, or house rat, has a scientific name of Rattus rattus rattus.
Lately, I’ve been listening to the podcast Keanan and Lakin Give You Déjà Vu. As the name suggests, it’s hosted by Staci Keanan and Christine Lakin, who played Dana Foster and Al Lambert, respectively, on the 90s sitcom Step By Step.
(Side note: I’ve met Christine Lakin, who was a judge on an Internet reality show I was on back in the early-ish days of YouTube, but that’s a story for a different time.)
I don’t typically enjoy rewatch podcasts, yet this show offers enough tangentially related sidebars that it doesn’t just feel like I’m rehashing old episodes of a show I remember bits and pieces of. And in the most recent episode I listened to—which is about a year and a half old, since I've only recently discovered the show—they noted how one of the characters says, “Oh, rats!” when faced with an unfortunate situation.
Both hosts agree that “rats!” should make a comeback as a turn of phrase, and I wholeheartedly co-sign. It worked for Step By Step, it worked for Calvin and Hobbes, and by golly, it can work again in the 2020s.
If you saw a black rat in the house (which would then also make its “house rat” moniker more accurate), you might address it by one of its nicknames.
“Yo, ship rat, what’s good?” you might say. Or, “Roof rat, who’s your favorite jazz musician?”
Of course, if you’re afraid of rats, you might simply say, “EEEEEEEEEK!” and run out of the room screaming.
However, if you wanted to scientifically label the same creature, you’d be a little more formal: Rattus rattus rattus.
This trifecta is known as a triple tautonym. That’s when zoological names of species consist of three identical words: the genus (or generic name), the species (or subspecific name), and the subspecies (or subspecific name).
Should rats give you goosebumps—after all, they’re the main villains in the classic Goosebumps book, “Attack of the Beastly Babysitter”—you’ve got plenty of other options.
Want to point out the Canada striped skunk to a friend? Just shout, “Mephitis mephitis mephitis!”
Prefer names with quite a few syllables in them, at the risk of suffering from Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia? Holler for a particular type of shore clingfish with a “Lepadogaster lepadogaster lepadogaster.”
So Long, Phobia!
Howdy! It’s Joey, back with more Fun Fact Friyay. We’ll try to keep this one from getting too wordy.
Curious about a herd of plains bison? You’d just have to say, “Bison bison bison,” and several may appear. Okay, that name is not nearly as fun, since it’s largely just a repeat of the animal’s common name.
By the way, what did the papa buffalo say before sending his child off to school? “Bison!”
Anyway, rats are often unfairly credited with spreading plagues, especially during the Black Death, which killed over a third of Europe’s population between 1347 and 1351.
Turns out, as with many of the world’s problems, humans were to blame, instead.
And much like me, rats tend to be generalists in their diet. They’re omnivores, and they’re not picky. Fruit, fungi, cereals, oranges, coffee beans, sugar cane—they’re all fair game when a rat’s in town.
Perhaps rats and humans aren’t so different, after all. Though if you still want to say, “Oh, rats!” should you ever see one nearby, I fully support you.