When Rats Run Wild: Mapping Our Tangled Lives with Animals

The sight of a rat on a city street tells a story far deeper than mere disgust.

In 2016, the residents of Malmö, Sweden, found their city unexpectedly shared. Following extensive flooding, rats were forced from their hidden sewers into the open, becoming visible on streets and in playgrounds. This sudden intrusion transformed them in the human eye from invisible waste-workers to unacceptable "trash animals" that had dared to exist out of place. This dramatic scene opens Animal Places: Lively Cartographies of Human-Animal Relations and shows how space, place, and human-animal relations intersect, producing diverse effects, boundary work, and political action ⁷ .

This article explores the fascinating field of animal geography, a discipline that challenges us to redraw our mental maps to include the creatures with whom we share our world. It moves beyond a human-centric focus to "include animals in ways that permit us to 'story place differently'" ⁷ .

Beyond the Human Map: Key Concepts in Animal Geography

Traditional maps show cities, roads, and political boundaries—a world designed by and for humans. Animal geography demands a more inclusive approach, creating what the editors of Animal Places call "lively cartographies" ¹ .

Lively Cartographies

These are not static maps on paper, but dynamic, multi-sensory understandings of how space is co-constituted by human and nonhuman actors. They acknowledge that spaces are not mute backdrops but active participants in shaping relationships. From public spaces and laboratories to homes and farms, human and nonhuman animals meet to make space and place together, through complex webs of power relations ¹ .

Humanimal Places

The concept of "humanimal" place-making emphasizes that our societies are built with animals and through all kinds of multispecies interactions ¹ . Our worlds are intertwined to the point that supposedly "human" societies are, in fact, always populated by other species.

Zoo-sensitive Scholarship

This approach requires attentiveness to the specific, lived experiences of animals. It asks researchers to consider how a place feels, smells, and sounds to a different species, and how that species, in turn, shapes the space. The essays in Animal Places deliver new understandings of the importance of nonhuman animals to understandings of place—and the role of places in shaping our interactions with nonhuman creatures ¹ .

Case Study: The Malmö Rat Invasion

The opening case of Animal Places provides a perfect real-world experiment to observe these concepts in action. Let's break down this "natural experiment" that unfolded on the streets of a Swedish city.

Experimental Background and Methodology

The "experiment" began with an environmental trigger: severe flooding that physically displaced the rat population from the sewer systems beneath Malmö ⁷ .

Research Question

How does the sudden visibility of a typically hidden animal species reshape human-animal relations and the social construction of place?

Methodology

While not a controlled lab experiment, the situation can be studied through ethnographic observation and discourse analysis. Researchers can track spatial shifts, human discourse, and political action ⁷ .

Results and Analysis

The results of this unintended case study were dramatic.

Urban environment with hidden animal habitats

Urban environments contain complex multispecies relationships often invisible to human residents.

The primary outcome was a profound shift in human perception. The rats, once a tolerated but invisible part of the city's ecosystem, were re-categorized as "trash animals" and a public nuisance the moment they became visible ⁷ . Their physical bodies, both living and dead (seen in the river), became symbols of disorder.

This crisis revealed the hidden spatial agreements that govern human-animal coexistence. The rats were acceptable only as long as they remained in their designated, hidden spaces. By daring to search for food "out of place," they triggered a forceful human response aimed at pushing them back into invisibility, thus demonstrating how places are not just physical locations but are also constructed through ongoing struggles over access and belonging ¹ ⁷ .

Animal	Assigned Place	Human Perception (In Place)	Human Perception (Out of Place)
Rat	Sewers, hidden spaces	Tolerated, invisible waste-worker	"Trash animal," pest, threat to order
Pet Dog	Home, park	Companion, family member	Nuisance (if uncontrolled)
Laboratory Mouse	Research facility	Data point, scientific tool	Biohazard, ethical concern
Zoo Animal	Enclosure	Object of education/entertainment	Escapee, danger

Table 1: Animal Roles and Human Perceptions in the Urban Landscape

Human Perception Shift in Malmö Rat Case

Before Flooding (Hidden) After Flooding (Visible)

Tolerated Perceived as Pest

The Invisible Web: Unsettling Our Assumptions of Control

The studies in Animal Places go beyond dramatic invasions to examine the constant, subtle co-habitation that defines our lives.

Feral Feeding in Kolkata

Tora Holmberg's research, "'Moving quietly in the shadows': On Feral Feeding in Kolkata," explores the subtle interactions and places created when humans feed free-roaming animals, forming bonds that exist at the margins of formal urban planning ¹ .

Felines on the Fault Line

Donelle Gadenne and Annie Potts examine how cats and humans navigated the disrupted urban landscape of the Christchurch earthquakes, revealing how disasters reshape multispecies dependencies and territories ¹ .

Model Territories

Tara Mehrabi and Cecilia Åsberg study the "choreographies" of laboratory fruit flies, showing how even in the highly controlled environment of the lab, these creatures participate in making their own micro-places and spatial routines ¹ .

Microbiogeographies

Jamie Lorimer's "Lively Cartographies of Homo microbis" explores the vast, invisible landscapes of microbial life that inhabit all larger bodies and spaces ¹ .

Spatial Concept	Description	Example from Animal Places
Convivial Life	Shared, cooperative life and place-making between species.	Rebekah Fox's study of "intimate cartographies" with companion animals ¹ .
Beastly Topology	The symbolic and emotional spaces created by animal relationships.	David Redmalm's analysis of condolence cards for bereaved pet owners ¹ .
Microbiogeographies	The vast, invisible landscapes of microbial life that inhabit all larger bodies and spaces.	Jamie Lorimer's "Lively Cartographies of Homo microbis" ¹ .
Unsettling Cohabitation	Relationships that challenge simple narratives of control or domestication.	Jacob Bull's study of the geographies of ticks and people .

Table 2: Conceptualizing Human-Animal Spaces

The Researcher's Toolkit for Multispecies Mapping

Engaging in zoo-sensitive scholarship requires a unique set of conceptual tools. This toolkit is less about physical instruments and more about perspectives and methodologies for reading the landscape differently.

Zoo-sensitive Ethos

Shifts the researcher's focus from a human-centric view to one that actively considers the animal's experience of a place.

Asking "How does this street sound, smell, and feel to a rat?"

Spatial Storytelling

Uses narrative to document how places are actively produced through the intertwined lives of humans and animals over time.

Documenting the daily routes of a community cat

Interdisciplinary Lens

Combines insights from geography, sociology, anthropology, biology, and literature to build a holistic picture.

Using historical records, biological data, and ethnographic observation

Attention to Power

Analyzes the struggles over access, visibility, and control that define a space.

Examining how city ordinances and architectural designs enforce spatial boundaries

Tool	Function	Application
Zoo-sensitive Ethos	Shifts the researcher's focus from a human-centric view to one that actively considers the animal's experience of a place.	Asking "How does this street sound, smell, and feel to a rat?" rather than just "How do the rats look to me?"
Spatial Storytelling	Uses narrative to document how places are actively produced through the intertwined lives of humans and animals over time.	Documenting the daily routes of a community cat, noting its interactions with people, other cats, and built structures.
Interdisciplinary Lens	Combines insights from geography, sociology, anthropology, biology, and literature to build a holistic picture.	Using historical records, biological data, and ethnographic observation to understand a human-wildlife conflict.
Attention to Power	Analyzes the struggles over access, visibility, and control that define a space.	Examining how city ordinances, pest control policies, and architectural designs (e.g., anti-pigeon spikes) enforce spatial boundaries.

Table 3: Essential Toolkit for Mapping Multispecies Encounters

Conclusion: A World Re-Storied

The journey into animal geography and "lively cartographies" does not provide simpler answers. Instead, it offers a richer, more complicated, and more honest understanding of the world we truly inhabit. It reveals that a park is not just a green space for people, but a territory for dogs, a hunting ground for cats, a navigational waypoint for birds, and an entire universe for microbes and insects.

By learning to map these entangled lives, we can begin to create a more thoughtful and ethical coexistence. As the rats of Malmö taught us, the question is not whether we share our spaces with other creatures, but how we will do so. The challenge is to learn to story our places differently, acknowledging that every landscape is a living tapestry, woven with the stories of all its inhabitants ¹ ⁷ .

Multispecies relationships shape our shared environments in profound ways.

This article was based on the scholarly work presented in "Animal Places: Lively Cartographies of Human-Animal Relations" (Routledge, 2018), edited by Jacob Bull, Tora Holmberg, and Cecilia Åsberg.