How many copies have been broken in disputes about the origin of humanity! Monkeys and biblical Adam and Eve, and even aliens were mentioned as our probable ancestors. Here is another original version: our progenitor may be the most ordinary … rat!
In the Indian village of Deshnok, there is a temple dedicated to the goddess Karni Mata. Twenty thousand rats live in it, no less! They are all considered children of the goddess. Thousands of pilgrims from all over India flock to Deshnok every year to pay their respects to the rodents.
Moreover, in this village and outside the walls of the temple, the rat is a sacred animal. Found in a villager's house, she will never be killed or poisoned with poison. She will be taken to the desert and released. Local Hindus believe that a person descended from a rat and that after death he can become a rat again.
The rat gene in everyone
Do rats and humans really have common ancestors? According to the latest studies by foreign scientists, there are about 35,000 genes in the human genome. But only 232 of them are not found in any other living creature on Earth.
During the experiment, which was carried out by specialists from the National Institute for Human Genome Research (USA), human DNA was alternately compared with the DNA of chimpanzees, baboons, cats, dogs, cows, pigs, rats, mice, chicken and three species of Japanese exotic fish. The result of the experiment baffled scientists. It turned out that in genetics we are closest to rodents, from which we borrowed 70 percent of our genes!
Why are all new drugs being tested on rats and not on monkeys, dogs, or cats? Is it because the rat organism is so similar to the human one?
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"But what about the appearance ?!" - supporters of Darwin's theory may argue. A monkey at least outwardly resembles a man … However, scientists say, in the physiological structure of the body, we are quite different from primates and at the same time we have a lot in common with rats.
There is a version based on long-term research that all viviparous mammals, including humans, descended from the oldest rodents that lived on Earth more than 160 million years ago, in the Jurassic period, simultaneously with dinosaurs. These animals were named Juramaia Sinensis. Recently, their fossil remains were found in the Chinese province of Liaoning. Moreover, the rodents during their lifetime had one interesting feature - they climbed trees perfectly!
So, could we really be rats in the distant past? It is unlikely that anyone will be pleased with such an assumption, but the fact is that the various human races differ from each other so radically that between them, even at the genetic level, there is no single common ancestor. What if intelligent life on Earth appeared simultaneously from several sources? For example, the space aliens who once arrived on Earth, taking the genome of a primate whose ancestor really were rodents, and artificially adding certain genes to it, created a person in his current form …
Canny
By the way, it has long been known that rats are extremely smart, cunning and well trained. It is worth giving several individuals poisoned food, from which at least one of them will die, as her companions will draw the appropriate conclusions: they will refuse the poisonous delicacy! Flocks of rats recognize only "their own", ruthlessly exterminating strangers from other flocks. At the head of the rat flock is always the strongest and most intelligent male. The tribesmen obey him implicitly.
There have been cases of unexplained mass rat invasions. So, in the XIV century, they penetrated into Europe in the holds of ships that arrived from distant Asia, and a terrible plague began, which claimed many lives. In the 19th century, hordes of rats captured Astrakhan. In front of the frightened residents of the city, the rats swam across the Volga …
During the Great Patriotic War, the migration of rats from the west to the southeast along with the Nazi invaders was noted. Several times they "captured" Stalingrad. In 1942, rats entered Tashkent.
Leningrad blockade woman K. Loginova recalls how ranks of rats moved along the Shlisselburg tract towards the mill, where they ground flour for bread issued by cards to the residents of Leningrad …
In Moscow, the rats settled for a long time. Today an unprecedented number of rodents have bred in the city.
Researcher Vadim Chernobrov, comparing numerous facts from the "history" of rats, came to the conclusion that these animals are more intelligent than we imagine. For example, they share "spheres of influence" among themselves.
In the 1970s, gray rats settled in Tula, having won the battle for this city from black brothers living there since the end of the 19th century. In Transcaucasia, grays settle in basements and cellars, and blacks - in attics.
Parapsychological abilities of rats - a byword! Everyone knows that cunning animals leave the ship in advance, which is destined to sink, but few people know that rats can easily sense other dangers as well.
So, in the Middle Ages, during the plague, they left the cities covered by an epidemic (which they themselves spread). Often, rats have a presentiment of earthquakes. But if all this can still be explained by some natural causes, then how will they find out about the upcoming man-made disasters ?! In the war before the bombing of Stalingrad, all the rats left the city. They fled from the ships, which the next day (!) Were destroyed by torpedoes.
Is the shift ready?
An amazing property of these animals is their survival in super-extreme conditions. Rats, as it turned out, are able to adapt to almost any climate. There were cases when they lived in refrigerators for a long time and hatched offspring at a temperature of almost -20 ° C.
Metro workers, sewers, those who have to work in basements and underground, can tell a lot about the representatives of the rat genus living in tunnels, sewers, sewer manholes. No one can yet say with certainty whether there really are giant mutant rats, about which the yellow press has repeatedly written, but it is known that under the influence of chemical and radioactive substances, the color of rat wool changes. Multi-colored rats have been seen in Moscow several times.
Maybe some forces help such unsympathetic creatures survive on our sinful Earth? Fighting with them never gave a 100% result. Even after a nuclear war, rats are the most likely to survive.
Due to physiological and genetic characteristics, these creatures can easily win the ecological race for survival other biological species, including homo sapience. For what? Really to found a new civilization ?! Such a future is hard to imagine.