THE REAL RAT RACE.
It’s official — rats can now drive, and they might be smarter than you think.
A team of scientists has taught the rodents how to operate a tiny vehicle and steer it to a specific destination, where they were rewarded with sugary cereal. Further study, it is hoped, could help scientists analyze how stress in humans could be reduced by driving and learning complicated tasks.
In work published in Behavioural Brain Research, researchers from the University of Richmond in Virginia built a makeshift vehicle out of a food container, with small metal bars that would allow a rat to steer it around. On a small rectangular track, the rats were tasked with driving to a marked goal.
“We already knew that rodents could recognize objects, press bars, and find their way around mazes, but we wondered if rats could learn the more complex task of operating a moving vehicle,” lead author and professor of behavioural neuroscience Kelly Lambert said in a news release.
According to the study, the team taught 17 rats how to drive the vehicle, and those who succeeded in reaching the end destination were given Froot Loops as a treat. The scientists determined that the rats’ brains were much more flexible than previously believed, allowing them to learn such complicated tasks.
But the rats’ environment affected their learning, too. Some of the rats were housed in an enclosure with various “interesting objects” like toys to interact with, while others were left in a simple cage. Researchers found that the rats who stayed in the more stimulating area actually had an easier time learning how to operate the vehicle.
Driving and learning a new skill could have also had a calming effect on the animals; after analyzing the rats’ hormones following their drives, Lambert and her team noticed that they experienced less stress and anxiety than before.
“We found that driving training led to more resilient stress hormone profiles,” Lambert said.
“The rat is an appropriate model for the human brain in many ways since it has all the same areas and neurochemicals as the human brain — just smaller, of course. Although humans are more complex than rats, we look for ‘universal truths’ about how brains interact with environments to maintain optimal mental health.”