World Animal Day

Today is World Animal Day! Every year on the 4th of October, people are invited to celebrate the (non-human) animals that share our lives and spaces, and to reflect on how animals are treated throughout the world. The tradition started in March 1925, at an event in Berlin that attracted thousands of attendees, and has since carried on annually, with a date change to October happening in 1931. 

World Animal Day logo

The 4th of October is the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, one of the most famous friars in history. Although he was born to a wealthy family, he forsook this wealth and promoted asceticism, eventually founding the Franciscan religious order. Francis believed that the world, having been created by God, was an inherently good place, but human sin corrupted it – not far off from how we often understand human environmental impact.

After Francis died, legends began cropping up about his supposedly miraculous life. These were compiled in the Fioretti di San Francesco or Little Flowers of St. Francis. Among the stories in the book is the legend of how Francis made a truce between the people of Gubbio and a man-eating wolf that was terrorising the surrounding lands. The story tells that Francis gave the wolf a stern talking-to, after which the wolf agreed to stop eating people or animals in return for food. After the compact was made, the wolf lived peaceably among the people of Gubbio for the rest of his days, until he passed of old age two years later, mourned by the entire city. 

Francis and the wolf of Gubbio mosaic, photo by Jim Forest CC BY-NC-ND

The story is fictional, of course, and served to reinforce the Christian belief that anyone could find redemption for their sins by converting to Christianity and repenting their sins. For such stories, Francis is associated with patronage of animals, making his feast day an excellent day to celebrate animals! 

This year’s theme for World Animal Day is “The World is Their Home Too” – a point that has been made by environmentalists for centuries and that scholars have been demonstrating has always been true through archaeological and historical research. Much of what we do at Rattus is to demonstrate just how much we share our world with rats!

So as you’re going about your day today, take care to be extra nice to animals. If you’ve got a pet, give them a (healthy) extra snack! Feed a bird some seeds, or maybe hold off on that silverfish trap. All of us, regardless of species, are just trying to get by.