The mental status of the rats seems a little unclear. Clearly, they are seen as possessing far less than normal human intelligence. They are treated as animals (rats!) and have to be carefully instructed to perform even simple tasks. For example, the trainer in Muct says "You tell a rat to take a shit, you gotta remember to tell 'er to pull her pants down first and pull 'em up afterwards." (14) Yet the man at the RAT institute says the procedure to become a rat will not change the narrator in the prologue, (5) and indeed it does not seem to other than the obvious effect on his will.