With an ornate facade and large, domed roof, the Karni Mata Temple in Deshnoke, Rajasthan, India, looks like most other places of worship. Step inside, however, and alongside the altars, shrines and statues, something extraordinary comes into view: a population of some 25,000 rats.
In most natural environments, rats are skittish and fearful, hiding away in dark corners and avoiding open spaces. Not so in this Hindu temple, which has become a top tourist attraction in the area.
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The rats run freely among staff and visitors, climbing railings and scurrying along ledges, weaving around offering trays and even across human shoulders. They are completely at ease in this urban habitat.
Biologically speaking, the rats inside the Karni Mata Temple are black rats (Rattus rattus), one of the world’s most adaptable mammals with a near-worldwide distribution. Yet here, the rodents are not seen or referred to as rats, rather kābā.
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Kābā and the Karni Mata
Worshippers believe the kābā residing within the temple are their reincarnated ancestors and dutifully care for the animals, providing them with food and drink. The handful that sport white coats – the result of a recessive genetic mutation – are venerated with an extra dose of devotion, as they’re believed to be manifestations of Karni Mata herself and, depending on who you ask, either her sons, stepsons or nephews.
“In broader travel literature and media, Karni Mata is often referred to as the Temple of Rats and it’s assumed that people are worshipping the rats,” says Kyle Trembley, an anthropologist who has written about the site.
“That’s not the case at all.”
Instead, they worship Karni Mata, a Hindu woman born in the village of Suwap in 1387, who became venerated as a goddess. Legend has it that she lived to be around 150 years old, during which time she performed a number of miracles.
These led her followers to believe that she was a direct incarnation of the Durga, a female warrior and deity who represents divine feminine energy, motherhood and protection. The first of Karni Mata’s miracles was that “she was in the womb for 21 months”, says Dinesh Bhura, a local tour guide.
Bhura adds that, after her father was bitten by a deadly snake, Karni Mata touched his feet and saved his life. The temple’s origin story begins with the drowning of Lakshman, who was either Karni Mata’s nephew, son or stepson.
“Karni Mata takes his body. She sits in a hut and enters a deep meditation, where she essentially goes to the realm of Yamraj, the god of death,” says Trembley.
“When Yamraj rejects her request to revive Lakshman, Karni Mata proclaims that anyone who dies from her family will no longer go to him. Instead, they will stay with her in the form of a mouse (kābā are often referred to as ‘mice’).”
Over the centuries, members of Karni Mata’s family – known as the Charan clan – flocked to the temple to see their ancestors in animal form.
“Charans believe that when they die, they become mice,” explains Bhura. “Then, if any mouse from the temple dies, it is reborn into a Charan family.”
The exact date of when the temple was built has been lost to history, but it’s believed to have been at some point before Karni Mata died in 1538.
Over the years, the sanctuary itself has taken many forms, with a new dome roof in the past decade. Even today, work continues. Indeed, reconstruction is currently taking place to better equip the site for visitors.
The origins of kābā
There are no historical records about the appearance of the kābā at the temple. The earliest documents Trembley has been able to translate come from a colonial British officer traveling through Rajasthan in the mid-1800s, who noted the abundance of rats while writing for a gazetteer. Consequently, the history and myths of the Karni Mata Temple regularly blur, as does the line between kābā and rat.
“They are described as an entirely different species,” says Trembley. “The Charans say that the kābā do not leave the temple, and that rats don’t enter it.”
Kābā are considered so different to black rats that, according to locals, when a plague was spreading through nearby Gujarat in the early 1990s, infected people came to the Karni Mata Temple, drank the same milk and water as the rodents, and were cured.
“It’s directly opposite to our understanding of rats and zoonotic illness,” says Trembley.
Studies confirm that rodents typically don’t move far from where they’re born, live in communities that don’t accept outsiders, and won’t disperse from an area where there is plentiful food, resources and shelter from predators. But the black rats at the Karni Mata Temple take this to the extreme.
Ecologically, the temple essentially functions as a closed ecosystem. The kābā have access to abundant meals, provided by the thousands of worshippers and tourists that stream through the temple’s doors every day.
There are no predators, because the locals have erected a net to keep out hunting birds, and they chase off stray cats and dogs. In evolutionary terms, the kābā are living in rodent paradise, in more ways than one. There really is no need to leave.
With an estimated 20–25,000 individuals living in such close quarters, the rats at the Karni Mata Temple form one of the densest known populations in any human setting. While living and breeding within the confines of the temple may have its advantages, the obvious negative is the likelihood of restricted gene flow.
Yet no reports of the mass die-offs or obvious deformities that might be expected from a genetically restricted population seem to exist. In contrast, the population appears to be stable.
“People in the village and who work at the temple all say that the population remains the same,” says Trembley, “though I’ve no idea how you could quantify it.”
In a population with limited gene flow, rare recessive traits can be expressed, such as that prized white coat. Travel writer Sophie Pearce encountered one of these individuals while visiting the temple in 2018. As is customary, her guide bellowed to the rest of the gathered masses that there was a white rat present – and the response was complete bedlam.
“I got crushed in a throng of people, because seeing a white rat is considered good fortune,” recalls Pearce. “My guide had to come and save me.”
Interactions with humans
Black rats are typically nocturnal animals that tend to avoid open spaces. But at the Karni Mata Temple, traditional biology collapses. Thousands of kābā take the day shift, climbing walls, racing along guard rails and making their way in and out of myriad tunnels, even flocking in the temple kitchens.
When it comes to mating, Trembley admits the kābā are more than happy to put on a show for visitors. But he has never seen a newborn, the assumption being that females give birth inside tunnels and burrows. Visitors do, nonetheless, see juvenile kābā scampering around.
The kābā are so comfortable with humans that they’ll also playfight in front of visitors. That usually involves them chasing each other, standing on their hind legs and “kind of boxing”, says Trembley. Things get more physical during breeding, when males push and fight to be the one that mounts the female.
And while Trembley has never seen any rats fighting to the death, he has noticed some bearing wounds, such as a missing ear, tail or patches of hair. The Karni Mata Temple is so vast that he believes they don’t contest for territory.
“There’s so much space and so many resources, you might see the rats fighting over a piece of roti, but they know that more will be offered,” he says.
Once inside the temple, tourists are encouraged to give offerings to the kābā, which range from sweets and chickpeas to peanuts and even whisky. As is customary inside Hindu temples, shoes are not allowed, even though the floor is sticky with droppings. In the unfortunate circumstance that a kābā is injured, visitors are told to give coins to atone.
This is most definitely a place to shuffle rather than stomp. It’s also a place where being touched and even bitten by a kābā is considered a blessing, rather than invoking thoughts of illness and amputation. Indeed, according to Trembley, there are no reports of disease outbreaks linked to the temple, but he admits that studies on these rats are lacking.
“At the Karni Mata Temple, they say that rats spread disease but kābā cure it. They also claim that scientists have tested for the plague and found no sign of it.”
Because they have no natural predators, the kābā demonstrate very little fear response compared to typical urban rats, who will generally flee sudden movements or noise. In contrast, they happily brush on bare feet and sit in laps.
“They are habituated to human presence,” says Trembley. “They are not afraid of being handled.”
A unique ecosystem
But right alongside the conveyor belt of tourists gawking at rats guzzling trays of grains, milk and sweets – a diet that surely must bring health implications – Charans solemnly worship Karni Mata, reuniting with the tinier and furrier incarnations of their family through prayer.
According to Pearce, the temple still feels spiritual and historic, “like a portal going back in time”. At 4am each morning the temple opens its doors to worshippers, who begin their day with prayer. Only after offering food to the kābā do they themselves eat.
“People from different communities bring various items,” says Trembley. “One man will bring milk from his cows. Some will bring their leftovers.”
All of this increases tenfold during the Navratri festival. Held twice a year in honour of the goddess Durga, it attracts tens of thousands of people from Rajasthan and the neighbouring states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana. Over nine nights, Deshnoke is transformed into a major metropolitan centre, with devotees queuing for hours to enter the temple.
The Galta Ji Temple, a 16th-century Hindu pilgrimage site, pays similar respect to a resident population of several hundred rhesus macaques and langurs, and Kasargod’s Ananthapura Lake Temple was believed to have been guarded by a vegetarian crocodile named Babiya for more than 70 years.
Yet the Karni Mata Temple remains unique for paying such reverence to an animal usually so reviled. As the world undergoes unprecedented change, the relationship between kābā and humans might just provide guidance and hope for cross-species co-existence.
“The Karni Mata Temple offers a fascinating look at how relationships are built across species. This is a place where people co-exist with a pest that is usually loathed and exterminated,” says Trembley.
“It makes you think about ideas of kinship, living alongside beings we never thought we’d have to. As the climate crisis puts different animals in the same place, these are important questions to consider.”
