Rats now know how to drive cars and may soon be organizing their own racing league. 🏁 Research from Dr. Kelly Lambert at Richmond University found that rats not only drive cars surprisingly well, they actually enjoy it so much that they’ll willingly take a longer route to get where they’re going. 🐀
Dr. Lambert says that she taught the rats to drive, but they taught her to enjoy the ride (of course, the rats don’t know about traffic yet). 😉 The larger goal of the research is to learn more about what makes animals happy and ultimately contribute to the field of mental health. 💙 In the process, it’s showing that rats are more intelligent and relatable than many may think. 🐁
Source:
Crawford, L. E., Knouse, L. E., Kent, M., Vavra, D., Harding, O., LeServe, D., ... & Lambert, K. G. (2020). Enriched environment exposure accelerates rodent driving skills. Behavioural Brain Research, 378, 112309.
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