Tokyo has a rat problem. Shibuya is crawling with "super rats". They're called "super", because the rodents seem highly resistant to rat poison. One thing these rodents aren't impervious to? Artists.
A few years back, Japanese art collective Chim Pom caught rats in Shibuya with nets and rat traps. According to the Huffington Post, the ensnared rodents were taxidermied, painted yellow, and inserted wires in their tails, creating Pikachus.
Chim Pom's website described their goal: "We can swear by our strong humanism toward animals
so much so that we're unable to even touch the original forms of meat we consume everyday.
Our aim is simply to produce real figures of Pikachu. Just for the purpose, we kick around piles of garbage bags and run after rats escaping along walls." Okay, then!
Super Rat [Chim Pom via Huffington Post]
(Top photo: Chim Pom)
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