Rats in the news: Rats can use tools!

[marko_the_rat]

Researchers have discovered that rats can be taught to use tools, an ability that was previously thought to be the sole domain of primates and some birds. Thanks to ristin for bringing this joyous news to my attention. I can see the comments on Slashdot now: "I for one welcome our new rodent overlords." But it's not like that all! They just want to help with the gardening. (Don't check your compost heap too closely.) higgs_raccoon, being the resourceful raccoon he is, has tracked down the original scientific article which includes videos of the tool-using rodents.

Comments

[moxxey.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was easy to tell that he was a rat. Rats are often used for tv and called mice due to people still being afraid of them. Not to say that mice can't be trained as we saw in the movie The Green Mile with Mr. Jingles and the mouse in Mousehunt.

Also in the remake of Tales of the Riverbank which was renamed Once Upon A Hamster, they used another rat named Martha, which they also labeled as a mouse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-CtMWsMGGo <-- here you can see that in the first series from 1959 they actually called the rat Roddy the Water rat, and in the show. They should have stuck with that!