Rats on crack like jazz music better. Sober rats prefer classical. But throw them in a tiny box together, and their music choice does not matter. All the rats will turn on each other and start a full-blown murder spree. Turns out, personal space matters more to them than who gets to make the Spotify queue.
Humans love observing their own tendencies in animal species in order to understand themselves better. Much like us, if there’s a lack of space and resources, existence becomes a fight for survival. If a limited number of rodents are kept in a utopian setting, with plenty of food and everything else they would need for a blissful life, they enjoy living. However, after a long while of eating, sleeping, and breeding, there is not much left to do except dust each other off.
Scientists have strapped rodents into rocket ships, have them figure their way out of mazes, and, for reasons unclear to everyone but the scientists behind the study, put them in tiny cars to see if they could teach themselves how to drive — they did, and they had their fun with it. However, the ethics of animal experimentation have always been a bit murky. They land somewhere between genuine curiosity, scientific necessity, and the sheer undeniable entertainment of seeing a rat while wearing a lab coat.
In the 1970s, researchers performed what they called the Rat Park Experiment. Scientists used an extensive amount of resources to determine whether rats could develop an addiction to substances. When placed in isolated conditions with just a bowl of morphine, it turns out it is easy for even them to get hooked. However, when made to live in improved circumstances with plentiful social support — a rat Disneyland of sorts — they could come off their behaviours and acclimate themselves to a normal life again. From this study, they concluded that addiction is not just about the substance in use, but also about mental and environmental well-being.
Although it has been decades since this study was conducted, it is still cited in some places. This is not just fascinating, but also a testament to the fact that it is simpler to understand human behaviour in non-human species.
Nevertheless, it is not fair to talk about rat experiments without considering the usefulness of them. When the maze experiment was conducted, researchers were able to track their diet, sleep, and exercise and observe how those factors affected their cognitive functions. Through this experiment, they could better understand memory loss and decision-making, among other concepts, under increased stress levels. They found that rats who are well-fed and well-rested find it easier to find their way out than sleep-deprived, lethargic rats.
Sounds similar to college students during exam season, doesn’t it?
Outside labs, rats have a surprising skill set. Some rats are trained to sniff out explosives in landmines, far more efficiently than machines. Others have been taught how to sniff out tuberculosis in test samples, offering a much more cost-effective method of diagnosis, especially in areas with limited resources. The rodent world has underappreciated heroes, saving the world one sniff at a time.
Certain studies have also led to a less wholesome aftermath. In some behavioural experiments, such as the Skinner boxes, ethical considerations cannot be ignored. John B. Calhoun’s famous study, the Universe 25 experiment, showed how overpopulation in rat colonies can lead to social collapse. The researcher provided them with unlimited food and water, but limited space. Initially, the population grew exponentially. However, after a while, reproduction ceased completely and the population soon went extinct, despite the continued availability of resources.
This posed eerie implications for humans living in overcrowded cities. Calhoun himself described it as a “behavioral sink”, as a way to say that certain social dysfunctions could easily emerge in colonies which are densely populated, even in humans. The most unsettling part about this analogy is that this experiment was later used to justify eugenics policies, which aim to improve the genetic quality of the human population.
This misinterpretation of Calhoun’s work is a prime example of how scientific studies, even those which started off with good intentions, can be twisted by humans to serve their own selfish, harmful ideologies. The legacy that this study left behind serves as a cautionary tale: while behavioral researches such as these can lead to valuable insights, the broader ethical and social implications they come with must always be seen in scrutiny to ensure that it is not misused in justifying oppressive policies.
Despite these slightly darker turns, rat studies have led to fascinating and delightfully bizarre outcomes. Whether they are ticklish, prefer jazz, or love to go for late night drives, rats are uncanny mirrors of human nature. All these experiments might seem trivial, but they provide us stories about ourselves, at times profound and at times absurd. These studies remind us that at the core of it, science is all about curiosity. Sometimes it is about groundbreaking discoveries, while other times, it’s all about figuring out how the Spotify Wrapped looked like this year for rats who are on crack.
1 Inglis-Arkell, E. (2014, July 29). Do Rats On Drugs Listen To Miles Davis? Depends. Gizmodo. Source Link
2 Rats taught to drive tiny cars to lower their stress levels. (2019, October 24). Source Link
3 Sederer, L. (2019, June 10). What Does “Rat Park” Teach Us About Addiction? Psychiatrictimes.com. Source Link
4 Kerplunk experiment. (2021, May 6). Wikipedia. Source Link
5 Nordling, L. (2024). The real clicker heroes: how I train rats to sniff out explosives. Nature, 632(8024), 468–468. Source Link
6 Giant Rats Trained to Sniff Out Tuberculosis in Africa. (n.d.). Education.nationalgeographic.org. Source Link
7 Melchor, A. (2024, May 28). Universe 25 Experiment. The Scientist Magazine®. Source Link
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