Giant rat
The term giant rat has been applied to various species of large rodents. They tend to be native to tropical and sub-tropical locations. Some have flourished in other climates, including the Coypu and the Gambian pouched rat, which have both become invasive species. Giant rats have also figured in popular fiction, where they are often portrayed as monster-like creatures.
Examples
Following are examples of giant rats and/or rodents.
South America
Africa
Asia and New Guinea
Extinct species
Giant rats in fiction
Fictional giant rats appear as monsters in fiction, role-playing games, computer games, and other venues of fantasy.
Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra
Perhaps the best known giant rat in fiction comes from the pen of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who in The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire has Sherlock Holmes declare, as an aside, to Dr. Watson:
- Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson, ... It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared.
Quite how the ship, the mammal, and the Indonesian island are associated is not specified. There are a number of species of large rats on Sumatra, with one, Sundamys infraluteus, actually being referred to as the "giant rat of Sumatra". Rats commonly colonise ships, and so there is an obvious line of speculation.
Holmesianist Alan Saunders has argued that the reference is in fact to events connected with The Adventure of the Dying Detective, although he identifies the rat as the Large Bamboo Rat.[1] A number of authors of Sherlockiana have endeavoured to supply the missing adventure of the giant rat of Sumatra. These tales include:
- In The Spider Woman (1944), Nigel Bruce's Watson briefly reflects on the Giant Rat of Sumatra when looking through a scrapbook of old cases.
- In Pursuit to Algiers (1945), a Holmes film starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, Watson tells the story of the Giant Rat of Sumatra to an audience on board a ship.
- The giant Sumatran rat is mentioned in the 1972 novel Watership Down in one of the rabbits' allegorical tales.
- The Tale of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, a 1974 comedy album by the Firesign Theatre (LP Columbia KC32730) is a pastiche with protagonists Hemlock Stones, the 'Great Defective', and his biographer and companion, Dr. John Flotsom, O. D., part of which takes place aboard the "Matilda Brigg". The name of this ship induces the group to perform the song Frigate Matilda (to the tune of Waltzing Matilda), which has become something of a cult standard.
- "A Father's Tale," a 1974 novelet by Sterling E. Lanier. Lanier's narrator, Brigadier Ffellowes, recounts his father's story of an encounter in the East Indies with a mysterious man calling himself "Verner", and a race of large, intelligent rats.
- In the 1975 novel Sherlock Holmes's War of the Worlds, Holmes mentions that Professor Challenger helped solve the case of the giant rat, although the actual name of the case is not stated, nor what was involved.
- The Talons of Weng-Chiang, a 1977 Doctor Who TV serial set in Victorian London, in which the hero (dressed in deerstalker, accompanied by a medical doctor with a housekeeper known as Mrs. Hudson) confronts a giant rat in the sewers of London.
- The Holmes-Dracula File, a 1978 novel by Fred Saberhagen, in which Holmes and Dracula (who turns out to be related to Holmes) uncover a plot to destroy London with plague-bearing rats, the Giant Rat being a living plague vector.
- The Giant Rat of Sumatra, a 1987 novel by Rick Boyer, which features the return of The Hound of the Baskervilles villain Stapleton. In this novel, the "giant rat" turns out to be a vicious tapir. (ISBN 0-586-20087-8)
- Dead Alive, a 1992 film by Peter Jackson, features a Sumatran Rat-monkey, a hybrid that "according to legend" resulted from the rape of tree monkeys on Skull Island by plague rats (The cage for the creature makes a cameo aboard the ship in Jackson's 2005 remake of King Kong).
- All-Consuming Fire, a 1994 Doctor Who novel by Andy Lane, part of the New Adventures series; in this story, the Doctor joins forces with Holmes and Watson to confront Azathoth, an entity from H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. The giant rat is portrayed as an alien monster. (ISBN 0-426-20415-8)
- "The Giant Rat of Sumatra," a 1996 short story by Paula Volsky, included in Eternal Lovecraft: The Persistence of H. P. Lovecraft in Popular Culture. (ISBN 978-0-9655901-7-4)
- The Giant Rat of Sumatra is a 1997 title in the Hardy Boys juvenile mystery series, written by Franklin W. Dixon. Frank and Joe Hardy investigate the sabotage of a new musical play based on the Sherlock Holmes story.
- The Giant Rat of Sumatra (1998) is the second novel in the Baker Street Mysteries juvenile series written by Jake and Luke Thoene.
- The Shadow of the Rat, a 1999 novel by David Stuart Davies, deals with the rat, a breed from Sumatra, as part of a plot against London using the bubonic plague. The "Matilda Briggs" is the ship that brought them.
- The Giant Rat of Sumatra, a 2001 novel by Daniel Gracely (ISBN 0-9714041-0-0)
- Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra, a 2002 novel by Alan Vanneman, (Carroll & Graf, ISBN 0-7867-0956-1). The 'Matilda Briggs' does not appear in this book.
- The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, a 2003 collection of short stories by Ted Riccardi supplied an adventure involving the Giant Rat of Sumatra. (ISBN 0-9658164-3-5)
- Sherlock Holmes' Lost Adventure: The True Story of the Giant Rats of Sumatra, a 2004 novel by Lauren Steinhauer. (ISBN 0-595-66386-9)
- The Giant Rat of Sumatra: or Pirates Galore is a 2005 children's novel by Sid Fleischman, but this is not a Sherlock Holmes story. The Giant Rat of the title is a pirate ship anchored off the coast of California in 1846.
- The Giant Rat of Sumatra is a 2005 novella by Thomas Emmon Pisano.
- In Dutch author Reggie Naus' 2008 children's book De schat van Inktvis Eiland (The Treasure of Squid Island), a group of pirates tell tall tales around the campfire. One of them claims to have seen all his shipmates being eaten by a giant rat on Sumatra. The author's a Holmes fan.
- Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra, a 2010 novel by Paul D. Gilbert, provides another version of the case with Holmes investigating the mysterious reappearance of the long-overdue clipper Matilda Briggs.
Other fictional giant rats
- A giant rat plays a pivotal role in the Bram Stoker short story "The Judge's House" (first published in 1914) in the collection Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories.
- The 1969 novel Ratman's Notebooks by Stephen Gilbert was the basis for the 1971 movie Willard and its 1972 sequel (as well as the 2003 remake) - all three works featured a large rat named Ben.
- The Stephen King anthology Night Shift contains a 1970 short story, Graveyard Shift, made into a 1990 movie of the same name, which climaxes with the revelation of a giant rat.
- Giant rats, known as Rodents of Unusual Size (R.O.U.S.), are a running gag in the 1973 novel and 1987 motion picture, The Princess Bride.
- The Giant Black Rat is a ferocious species of radiation spawned mutants featured in James Herbert's "Rats Quadrilogy," beginning with 1974's The Rats.
- A giant rat is discovered lurking in the London sewers in the "Gnaws" episode of the 1976 British television series The New Avengers..
- In the 1996 Jet Li film Dr. Wai and the Scripture Without Words (ċéŞç = Adventure King) a giant mutant rat (frequently mistaken as some sort of marsupial) is encountered in the basement of a 1930s era Shanghai newspaper and complications ensue.
- Giant rats are enemies in the Fallout videogame series, grown by centuries of mutation. They appear in every game but Fallout 3 which instead are replaced by Giant Mole rats. The rats come in varieties of "Small, Big, Giant Rat, Giant Rat Pup, Rodent of unusual Size, and Unusually large sized rodent"
References
- ^ The Sumatran Devil
External links