Some Similarities between Rats and Humans

Rats and humans are very similar. Rats are highly intelligent, social animals that have followed us into cities, onto our turf, and made themselves feel at home. In effect we are competing most aggressively with verminous species like rats because they are most like us. When you think about it, where do most wild rats live? In the attic of your home (I’m not trying to creep you out, but it’s probably true). And who else lives in your home? You! That kind of proves that rats think like us on where to live. Scientists did a test to determine if rats are capable of reflecting on processes. What that basically means is if you taught a rat and gave it a test, would the rat be able to know if it was right or wrong. I recently read an article about this that I made easier to understand, but the opening paragraph did make sense and here is what it said: Let’s say a college student enters a classroom to take a test. He probably already has an idea how he will do on the test, before he even takes out a pencil. But do animals possess the same ability to think about what they know or don’t know?

Here’s where I made it easier to understand: It’s easy to find out if humans believe they do or don’t know the answer to a task or test. You just ask them. With nonverbal animals it’s much harder to find the answer. But somehow scientists found out how to communicate with rats through their behavior. The tests asked the rats to discriminate between a number of responses. Sometimes the choices were relatively easy, and the rats were able to make a choice that generated a large reward. But often the choices were quite difficult, and the rats faced a dilemma: Should they continue and take a chance on the test with the risk of no food reward, or should they just bail out and take the small, but guaranteed reward? As you can see, food is the greatest motivator for all animals, even for a little rat. One part of the test was presenting the rats with a sound and asking them to determine if it was “short” or “long.” When the sounds were more than obvious to if they were short or long, the rats had no problem finding the right answer. But for sounds that that were kind of in the mid-range, the rats found it extremely hard to know if they were short or long. So what should they do: Guess and possibly be wrong, or simply refuse to take the test and get a small reward?

Research shows that rats know when they don’t know the answer to a question. Isn’t that cool? That could open possibilities to more advanced research on rats. So I guess that does prove that you can train your rat.

University of Georgia (2007, March 9). Rats Capable Of Reflecting On Mental Processes. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 3, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2007/03/070308121856.htm