Dear Religious Africans: Rats Avoiding Rat-Traps Is Not Witch-craft

Recently I went to someone’s house and I heard them complain that the household rats are no longer entering our locally made yellow rat gum catcher or traps. And their explanation for this sort of behavior was very simple as all other religious explanation of things- “Witch Rats.”

Sadly, the house which I visited is not alone on this Point of view, in short it is our intrinsic territorial absurdity to always assign our ignorance to the supernatural and I feel ashamed because the people in that household are educated. But this is not new to us at all.

And so I want to use the small medium to educate some of you who think that rats avoiding rat gums are manifestations of witchcraft. You see, when you stay under the congregation of theology, you will always reason primitively because nothing grand and intellectual will never be administered to you. So, instead of your IQ to grow, you will be decreasing in your senses.

Please, this is why some of us beg you people to study and learn science for your own benefits.

Rats avoiding gum traps are but the manifestations of evolution in biology and also in Psychology what is called “OPERANT CONDITIONING”, “The Law of Effect”, “Discrimination” and the effects of negative reinforcers.

Due to time and the avoidance of a lengthy writing I will not delve into large details. This is what I should charge for bailing you people from what Bacon termed “Idol of the market place and Theatre.” But it is of my good to regulate the crass superstitions and ignorance in my environment.

To break it down simply, when you keep using gum traps to catch rats, their offspring and other rats are learning and therefore what we call an “OPERANT” (in psychology) has occurred. And then the Law of effect which explains that a conditioned response will be stamped in (the rat’s psyche) and the previous response you are used to, which rats always walk into your gum traps foolishly have been stamped out, because they have restructured and learned by experiences you gave them.

And thus due to constant repetition of these trap activities, the rat species have evolved and learned to recognize a rat gum trap, and this is what we call in psychology “Discrimination.”

Please this is not witchcraft. Organisms learn and evolve and pass the same traits to their younger ones. It is not just humans that learn from mistakes and traps and avoid them. I know religion does not teach a lot of you that animals think and learn also. So please, understand this.

What you should do now, is to change the rat gums and redesign it in a very new and different way they have never seen before. By so doing, they’ll fall into it again but with time again, they’ll learn your new tricks and then begin adapt and then you’ll begin to call them witch rats again.

Thank you.

By Imoh “Son of David”