rElearn

The economist this week reports a study which found that the black rat actually comprises several distinct species. Apparently this will be useful for devising better rat eradication strategies.

It is the brown rat that is used by scientists. Mice are used in genetic research but rats are often used in experiments into things like learning. Wikipedia writes about rats:

When it comes to conducting tests related to intelligence, learning, and drug abuse, rats are a popular choice due to their high intelligence, ingenuity, aggressiveness, and adaptability. Their psychology, in many ways, seems to be similar to humans.

People, like rats, are:

• intelligent
• ingenious
• aggressive
• adaptable

It is our ingenuity that helps us devise aggressive ways to exterminate rats (and experiment on them). Rats, foxes, grey squirrels, crows and magpies are all highly intelligent, social animals that have followed us into the 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.

We have consistently underestimated the levels of intelligence and types of consciousness that animals are capable of. Crows (and other members of the Corvidae family) for instance demonstrate levels of intelligence and social order which, according to earlier views of avian brain anatomy, were impossible. A fascinating case is recorded of a group of crows in Israel who learned to fish. They dropped crumbs in a pond and snatched fish that came to eat it. The crows showed delayed gratification (by not eating the bread), a knowledge of cause and effect and crucially they devised a tool-based strategy that was completely cultural, that is learned, rather than innate. The New Caledonian Crow is also known to fashion and use several types of tool.

We used to think using tools was something only ourselves and apes had managed to master. Scientists now suspect that rats are capable of meta-cognition, something also previously only ascribed to primates. Another recent study found thatelephants can recognise themselves in a mirror - an advanced behaviour previously only attributed to humans, great apes and dolphins. This had never been confirmed before because of the difficulty in constructing the experiment – the elephants would smash the mirrors. To overcome this researchers devised huge 8 x 6 foot robust mirrored surfaces that could be placed in the elephant enclosures. Elephants exhibited behaviour that showed the that they knew it was their own reflection and could touch a marked spot on their heads that could only be seen in the mirror.

We have a tendency to want nice rational and clear-cut explanations to things, like that animals are different from us, quantifiably less intelligent. But every day new discoveries lead us to redefine what makes us different, lead us to requestion and rethink ourselves. We have a lot to relearn.

Related Post: Crows put to work (but paid peanuts)