Researchers Train Rats To Drive Tiny Cars (phys.org) 81
New submitter BytePusher shares a report from Phys.Org: U.S. scientists have reported successfully training a group of rodents to drive tiny cars in exchange for bits of Froot Loops cereal, and found that learning the task lowered their stress levels. Their study [published in the journal Behavioral Brain Research] not only demonstrates how sophisticated rat brains are, but could one day help in developing new non-pharmaceutical forms of treatment for mental illness, senior author Kelly Lambert of the University of Richmond told AFP on Wednesday. Lambert said she had long been interested in neuroplasticity -- how the brain changes in response to experience and challenges -- and particularly wanted to explore how well rats that were housed in more natural settings ("enriched environments") performed against those kept in labs.
She and colleagues modified a robot car kit by adding a clear plastic food container to form a driver compartment with an aluminum plate placed on the bottom. A copper wire was threaded horizontally across the cab to form three bars: left, center and right. When a rat placed itself on the aluminum floor and touched the wire, the circuit was complete and the car moved in the direction selected. Seventeen rats were trained over several months to drive around an arena 150 centimeters by 60 centimeters made of plexiglass. As she had suspected, Lambert found that the animals kept in stimuli-rich environments performed far better than their lab rat counterparts, but "it was actually quite shocking to me that they were so much better," she said. "This makes me curious what the implications are for humans, their work environments, job performance and social mobility," writes BytePusher.
She and colleagues modified a robot car kit by adding a clear plastic food container to form a driver compartment with an aluminum plate placed on the bottom. A copper wire was threaded horizontally across the cab to form three bars: left, center and right. When a rat placed itself on the aluminum floor and touched the wire, the circuit was complete and the car moved in the direction selected. Seventeen rats were trained over several months to drive around an arena 150 centimeters by 60 centimeters made of plexiglass. As she had suspected, Lambert found that the animals kept in stimuli-rich environments performed far better than their lab rat counterparts, but "it was actually quite shocking to me that they were so much better," she said. "This makes me curious what the implications are for humans, their work environments, job performance and social mobility," writes BytePusher.
Researchers Train Rats To Drive Tiny Cars (Score:5, Funny)
^^^ THIS is what I have been waiting for my entire life!
Now that it's here i'm not sure what to do with the rest of my life.
I might make a good dread pirate Robert's....
Re:Researchers Train Rats To Drive Tiny Cars (Score:5, Funny)
The alternative view is that the rats "trained" the research to build them cars. I'm looking forward to their next move
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Secret of Nimh all day brah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Researchers Train Rats To Drive Tiny Cars (Score:5, Funny)
The summary left out some important information: This research was funded by Uber.
Since the death of the pedestrian in Phoenix, their self-driving development is in limbo. Human drivers are too expensive. So the only option left is trained rodents.
They started with mice, but they were too skittish and their legs were too short to reach even the miniaturized brake pedals. They tried beavers next, but they kept chewing on the steering wheels. Then squirrels, but nuts are much more expensive than Fruit Loops. So they finally settled on rats.
The first rat-driven cars will be road-tested in California next month.
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You're joking, but cloned rat brains working in tandem may be at the heart of future self driving cars.
Someone's been reading Spacetrawler [baldwinpage.com].
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You're joking, but cloned rat brains working in tandem may be at the heart of future self driving cars.
Someone's been reading Spacetrawler [baldwinpage.com].
Thank you for exposing me to spacetrawler, I had no idea it existed.
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Why not just harvest human brains from the homeless?
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Humans out, rats in. I see where this is going ... It will be Lawyers next!
Next? The lawyers were first!
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The ROUCs? (Score:3)
Rodents of unusual cars? I don't think they exist.
Buckminster fullers's Pigeons (Score:2)
They once trained pigeons to guide bombs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Probably would be a better way to do a google car.
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If a rat drives around in a tiny Tesla, is it a Musk Rat?
Smithers! Hand me an eel! (Score:2)
I'm going to build a joke!
And they're going to call it ... (Score:1)
... Really Ass Tiny System.
wrong focus (Score:2)
"This makes me curious what the implications are for humans, their work environments, job performance and social mobility," writes BytePusher.
This makes ME curious about why Froot Loops are so frikkin' awesome.
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This makes ME curious about why Froot Loops are so frikkin' awesome.
Fun fact about Froot Loops: The colors are a lie - they're all the same flavor.
Re: wrong focus (Score:2)
It'y true. I tested it. (Score:3)
You can also add red food dye to white wine at room temperature, and even wine "experts" will never know it was white.
The "flavors" they "taste" are also more based on the label than on the actual chemical components by the way.
They all taste like grapes with less sugar, more acid, sometimes more bitter tannins, and bitter "lighter fluid" alcohol. Anything beyond that is bullshit.
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Depends on the flavor of one's synesthesia...
The "flavor" is a lie too. (Score:2)
They do not really have a flavor. A taste, yes. But its flavor is mostly imaginary, based on what we assume the tastes to go with.
We've know this concept for decades... (Score:5, Funny)
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"wanted to explore how well rats that were housed in more natural settings ("enriched environments") performed against those kept in labs"
So the ones that lived in garbage piles performed better?
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As George would say, "garbage in, garbage out".
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Right? I'll think about this article next I'm sitting in traffic to go to work or get home at rush hour. We're all just rats in a maze called society.
Sometimes life really can be a rat race. (Score:3, Interesting)
From the article:
Sometimes life really can be a rat race.
And even if you win... you are still a rat.
They seem to be taking quite the leaps in logic on how this research applies to treating so many conditions of human behavior. Just how complex can this experiment be that it tells them so much about things like dementia and managing stress? It also seems like much of this should be fairly obvious stuff. Could it be that no one did similar testing with actual humans? They couldn't do this same testing at a driver training school? I guess feeding rats Froot Loops is cheaper than paying people to sign a waiver. My guess is that the data has about as much relative value as the Froot Loops to human testing.
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The research emphasis was between lab rats and rats from more natural "enriched environments". (Piles of garbage? Ship bilges?). The difference in performance was apparently far beyond what they expected. Rather like the difference in health and performance between a person who grew up in a sterile orphanage and one that was able to go out and explore naturally.
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Seem obvious? (Score:2)
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I'm gonna start of with /mod == Insightful
Because it is too fucking true. /whispers the elephant in the room.
Re: Seem obvious? (Score:2)
Well the control group also got fruit loops as well. This study was examining how the non-behavioral setting effected their learning and motivation, specifically when they had a stimulating environment where they could interact with other rats, or the traditional isolated cage with food and water only.
The reason I find it interesting is that in many office spaces, they're just about work. Socializing and play are discouraged, because management and owners feel like they are losing productivity. However, fr
With all the pet videos on the Internet... (Score:1)
...I donâ(TM)t understand how there isnâ(TM)t an entire economy around vehicles for pets.
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...I don't understand how there isn't an entire economy around vehicles for pets.
Well, they do make balls for hamsters, and some dogs have learned how to ride skateboards...
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There's that cat that rides around on a Roomba.
Tesla (Score:2)
Probably works better than Smart Summon.
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Are they good drivers? (Score:2)
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How do they compare with a 16-25 yo male for fatal crashes per MVKT?
How many people cut themselves shaving each year and die as a result?
Inquiring minds want to know, and so does Harrison Ford.
(The Mosquito Coast (1986)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0... [imdb.com]
Don't watch the trailer or read the synopses. If you truly have not watched the movie, or heard about it , just watch it.
Talk about under appreciated movies /Lazy/inserts link to /. article posted several weeks ago about underappreciated movies.
And: American driver or German driver? (Score:2)
A few hours of practical training?
Or months of mandatory driving lessons and theory lessons? (Gotta be able to drive in narrow German cities and highways with no speed limits.)
Now training them to wear clown suits (Score:4, Funny)
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What are we going to today Brain? (Score:2)
Same thing we do every day Pinky, TRY TO DRIVE AROUND THE WORLD.
So? (Score:1)
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Actually, it's a rich get richer kind of scenario. The TL;DR version of the abstract is this: rats who have a good life enjoy driving more and are better at it than rodents whose lives suck.
Life imitating art (Score:1)
As a kid I read a book [ebayimg.com] I thought was fiction.
So the self driving cars (Score:2)
Water, food and remember to allow time for the rat to wake up every morning.
Cruising (Score:2)
If they put into the cage some freshly hatched hen's eggs, those lucky rats can drive around and pick up chicks.
Boring is dumbing. (Score:2)
Where I from, we have a saying, that could be translated like that.
Yes, that cubicle literally is making you stupid. Yes, doing this to your employees is harming your business.
There's nothing more harmful to mental development, than an environment devoid of "stimuli".
How is that surprising to anyone?
Especially when we know that without stimuli, people even start to hallucinate.
A control they may have missed (Score:1)
The conclusions don't surprise me, but it could be that the passengers weren't placing their paws on the wires.
In which case they won't have experienced any electric charge.
Did they have a group of rats with an electric charge passing through them for the same amount of time?
I see (Score:2)
It must be going badly for the driverless car developers that they secretly try to use rats now to drive our cars.
Whoa (Score:3)
So ... (Score:2)
... we are teaching rats to drive cars and at the same time trying to relieve people of driving them (with self driving cars).
Coordinate, people!!
Animal Intelligence! or A.I. (Score:2)
And now we can call those phony A.I. start-ups literally a rats nest!
People got paid for this (Score:3)
The fact that someone got paid to do this makes me question my career choices.
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You could always join the ever growing field of people that want to know what happens when fish get drunk [mentalfloss.com]!
Low stress levels? (Score:1)
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What's it say about past studies ? (Score:2)
Those where the rats were assumed to be simple mindless automata and were kept in sterile, alien (to a rat) environments. It's frightening that the experimenters gush about attributes that should be obvious. Worse: "Well experiments show that _rats_ are complex but until shown otherwise we still assume that all other creatures we experiment on aren't. Except monkeys. We know they're intelligent, complex, feeling, creatures so we don't like to let people know what we do to them."
I call shenanigans! (Score:2)
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"found that learning the task lowered their stress levels" I don't know what world exists where driving lowers anyone's stress levels!
Solitary confinement.
UBER ATG (Score:2)
Where can I see a video? (Score:2)
I want to see rats driving tiny cars! I am disappointed the article has no video of it! All it has is a commercial for Excedrin.
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I want to see rats driving tiny cars! I am disappointed the article has no video of it! All it has is a commercial for Excedrin.
This link has a couple videos embedded in the article: https://www.newscientist.com/a... [newscientist.com]
Every time I read this headline (Score:2)
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I'd rather be the stainless steel rat.
Why rats and not toucans? (Score:2)
Those dirty rat bastards drove off with our money! (Score:1)
Louie, this has ta stop! (pounding finger into the secluded italian table top)
Da boss ain't gonna put up with it NO MORE!
Louie: You mean??...
Ralph: Yes. Da poisoned fruit loops. Capiche?
Louie: But Ralph... (waffling) they're cute an' all and.. what am I gonna tell my kids?
Ralph: You goin' soft on me Louie? Youz tell the kids that you had to put a stop to a bunch of sneaky thievin' rat bastards.
Ralph: And tell 'em they're getting new toy cars for Christmas.
When did Congress become test subjects? (Score:1)
Why is this news? (Score:1)
Next rat stop: Politics! (Score:2)
Researchers train rats to sign paper documents; gaslight, make overt threats, move goal posts and evade responsibility. DNC, RNC weigh options.
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DNC, lawyers says - we can take off our human outfits.
Plastic windows (Score:2)
Reduced stress, because car? Or because they felt less exposed to potential predators in those nice little enclosed spaces?