Brad: As usual, your observations are brilliant! (Except for equating the cute little mice species that have given us the likes of "Mickey and Minnie", "Jerry" of 'Tom and Jerry' fame, and "Mighty" with those of king Rats, "You...you....you dirty rat", and the Rat Pack!) However, it may be premature to dismiss evolution, though I do understand scholars think we came from monkeys. I use to have rats as pets when I was about 8 years old. We had 3. One killed another one (Cain and Able....just like humans), which left two, who became seriously anti-social with me, even biting me at times. Yes, they were just like humans, biting the hand that blesses them, not appreciating the blessings they had, i.e., a comfy, fresh daily saw-dust, upstairs pad, 3 squares a day with plenty of water to replenish water and electrolytes lost from exercising on the treadmill, and ... job security, a locked fenced gate to prevent their escape, I mean, er...to protect them from evil predators. Isn't it interesting that humans and rats are so compatible and competitive that they both have "RAT Races"? Both can be exterminated using RAT Poison (hey, I watch CSI). And, both can do what nobody likes, even gang members, i.e., "Rating each other out". Researchers seem to comprehend this inherent equality of humans and rats. Understanding human's penchant for over indulgence, researchers always inject 95 times the amount of ....well, anything.....into rats to determine the ill effects on the rats. I mean, really. If you injected me with 99 times the normal daily consumption of cheese by a human, I would die of constipation. Duh! And, of course, we haven't even touched on the study of overcrowding and socializing of humans in a community as it relates to the study of rats living over layers and layers of other rats in a cage. Perhaps I just don't undertand the nuances of biological research and the indefatigable efforts of researchers to try and draw conclusions based on comparative studies of humans and their ever-so, closely related, cousins, ...the rats!!! --Ziobuck forgetting his BS degree in biological sciences 3 decades ago.