[LINK] "The Intriguing New Science That Could Change Your Mind About Rats"

[rfmcdonald]

Brandon Keim's Wired article argues that in a wide variety of ways, rats and human beings are fundamentally the same, at least in being smart social mammals. Provocative, long read.

[W]e still have much to learn about rats, and from them. Yes, there’s volume upon volume of rat research—but most of it focuses on traditional questions of basic physiology and drug responses and so forth. Few researchers have asked what rats think and feel, or how they’ve adapted to environments so very different from their ancestral home in southern Mongolia.

On this front, rats are guides to emerging questions of evolution and cognition: how cities shape the brains and behaviors of the animals within them, and whether aspects of consciousness once considered exceptional might in fact be quite common.

Foremost among these is empathy, widely considered a defining human characteristic. Yet rats may possess it too. An especially fascinating line of research, the latest installment of which was published last year in the journal eLife, suggests rats treat each other in an empathic manner. Such thoughtfulness underscores the possibility that rats are far more complicated than we’re accustomed to thinking—and that much of what’s considered sophisticated human behavior may in fact be quite simple.

This idea runs contrary to notions of human exceptionality. Yet evolution teaches us that humans and other creatures share not only bodies, but brains. In that light, why wouldn’t rats care about each other? The idea also challenges us to see rats anew: Not just as vermin, or as anonymous laboratory models of some biological process, but as fellow animals.

As neurobiologist Peggy Mason, a pioneer in rat empathy research put it, “I’m perfectly happy thinking of myself as a rat with a fancy neocortex.”