Joe Shute
speaker
145 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 25 Jul
Joe Shute’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
But everywhere else, exactly as you say, where humans go, rats go.
Stowaway is the name of my book, and Stowaway is what rats do.
Even today in the modern era, rats exist on, studies have shown, on two-thirds of all maritime shipping.
Back in the day when the global trade started, you know, and rats would exist on boats that were stuffed full of provisions, and rats would, you couldn't imagine a better habitat for rats.
Oh yeah, sure.
So they would secrete themselves in food stores.
And sometimes when ships have been marooned at sea, the rats would become food source themselves for sailors that were running out of provisions.
And they would turn on these invading rats that had set up camp on the ships.
There are many incredible things about the physiology of rats.
One of the ones is that they're able to compress their skeletons to fit into the tiniest of holes that are less than an inch wide.
And you can get a massive muscular rat that can squeeze itself through.
Rats are nocturnal.
They do come out in the day and they are very adaptable.
I mean, the great is why they are such a successful species.
Scientists say that some species can, some rodent species can gnaw and some rodent species can chew.
Rats can do both.
So they can chew with their back molars and they gnaw with their two sort of sharp front teeth, which a lot of people will associate with rats.
and that adaptability extends to when they come out as well so they are traditionally nocturnal animals but if there's a food source that's better suited to them during the day then rats will go and feed on it during the day
I've learned the hard way that rats are nocturnal because as part of the process of writing this book, my wife and I got two pet rats that I wanted to sort of study.
And the noise that they make when the lights go out at night and they start clattering around their cage is definitely something to behold.
Showing 61–80 of 145 · page 4 of 8
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