Rats feature large in the next BBC wildlife series to be presented this autumn by the noted broadcaster, Sir David Attenborough.
He is filmed sitting in a Hindu temple and discussing the rodents, while hundreds of them scurry about over his bare feet.
"If there is one animal in the whole animal kingdom I would rather not do a programme about, it is the rat," he said yesterday while attending a session at the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Leicester.
Rats are but one of hundreds of creatures to be discussed in Sir David's new 10-part series to be screened from November. It had the working title Life in Mammals and was still being filmed, he told The Irish Times.
Sir David (76) had recently returned from Sri Lanka and would soon travel to Thailand to film Lar Gibbons and siamang lesser apes, then travel on to China.
"It is a story about mammal adaptive radiation," he said yesterday and would cover species from rats to whales, and marsupials to humans.
The rat incident occurred in a temple in India dedicated to the animals, where visitors are encouraged to allow the creatures to run all over them. "I was required to sit on a stool to talk about these things but I said that was all right I can wear bicycle clips," Sir David said.
He was then told that one might only enter the temple barefooted and then discovered that banana had been smeared all over the stool on which he was to sit. It had been "difficult to concentrate", he admitted.
His visit to the British Association this year had particular poignancy given he was from Leicester but also because he had spent his childhood living on the Leicester campus where his father was principle of the then Leicester College. "I grew up in what I thought was a mansion," he said.
"The university means a great deal to me."
He visited the Attenborough Building on campus during his short stay, named in honour of his father.
Sir David's new series will begin on the BBC this November. His memoirs, Life on Air, will be published on September 19th.