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Rats love driving tiny cars, even when they don’t get treats
- doitLP 7y agoFootage: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VYErLcG6aCQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VYErLcG6aCQ
- johnchristopher 7y agoCool ! Can it be weaponized ? I mean, could it do better than some hypothetical tiny AI controlled robots in, e.g., earthquakes rescue missions ?
- 14 7y agoWhen this came up the other week I thought of little mice driving around the fields in their mini tractors plucking weeds out of the ground with no herbicides sprayed.
- anigbrowl 7y agoThat's not what weaponized means..
- johnchristopher 7y agoThat was a joke...
- grogenaut 7y agoThey had pidgeon guided bombs and missiles in ww2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon I laughed a bit when I saw the project head... Of course that's who.
- mftrhu 7y agoThey were never built, but during that period people had absolutely wild ideas. Great Britain was considering building 10 kton nuclear mines, to be buried along the borders of Germany and to be detonated in case of a Soviet invasion. Even if buried, those mines would just end up freezing, so some bright mind came up with the idea of putting live chicken inside them, to keep the temperature up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock
- lostlogin 7y agoThe bat bombs were tested, with entirely predictable results. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb
- rz2k 7y agoPigeons were also used for ocean search and rescue. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1980/10/02/Coast-Guard-clips-wings-of-pigeon-project/4773339307200/ https://www.upi.com/Archives/1980/10/02/Coast-Guard-clips-wi...
- ape4 7y agoWe have posts today about self driving cars (that cost billions in development) and rat driven cars (that probably cost under a thousand). Rats have a native understanding of snow, rain and other bad weather.
- maxerickson 7y agoAnd poor distance vision. http://www.ratbehavior.org/perception.htm http://www.ratbehavior.org/perception.htm
- ape4 7y agoRat glasses
- rantwasp 7y agowhat are you saying? self driving rat cars?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sillysaurusx 7y agoIt would be pretty interesting to scale up the experiment. Making a control scheme for rats in a full-size car wouldn’t be too hard. But you might have to progressively train them on larger and larger vehicles. Careful not to let it out of the lab though, otherwise it might become aware of how much power it’s been given. Most powerful rat in history. :) Imagine being a rat in a full-size car. It must feel like you’re driving a house.
- rantwasp 7y agotalking about the rat race
- sebastos 7y agoI'm not sure exactly why but this question has left me breathless in hysterical laughter.
- maxerickson 7y agoDid anybody read the paper? What was the activity pattern they used to establish the baseline measurements for the hormones?
- ChrisSD 7y agoIf you click the DOI link at the bottom of the article it'll take you to a page where you can download the PDF.
- maxerickson 7y agoThanks. I swear I looked last time this was discussed and there was a nice fat charge to download it.
- maxerickson 7y agoSo the driver of my question above is what impact age has on the hormone measurements. As far as I can tell, they didn't have groups that lived in each environment without the activity training.
- weregiraffe 7y agoMy therapist: rats driving tiny cars aren't real, they can't hurt you Rats driving tiny cars:
- 1996 7y agoAfter healing cancer, diabetis and alzheimers in rats, now we are giving them cars. This is going too far!
- shrubble 7y agoSo basically the character of the mouse Stuart Little , which is a nice children's book that is a classic and was written by E.B. White, does have a limited basis in reality?
- edoo 7y agoMake a rat city with houses where they can sleep and different buildings they can go to for food and water, but make it so they can only drive to different buildings.
- masonic 7y agoExisting rat populations would never allow this due to NIMBYism and would use zoning to stop it.
- RickJWagner 7y agoA short while back I would have thought this to be intuitive. I love to drive, and have wanted to do it since my teens. But then my kids and their friends came along. They don't love to drive! No cruising Main street. They do their socializing on the phone. So maybe the rats are just old school?
- nyxtom 7y agoThis is the best experiment. I can now live happy knowing rats have learned how to drive a small rat car to deal with stress. It’s no wonder, it looks like a lot of fun for them
- Cheyana 7y agoImagine if they teach them how to pilot drones. They’ll be like Air Force pilots, complete with attitude. Not just well-adjusted but also more willing to take risks. My first and only skydiving experience I had an adrenaline high that lasted all day, with visions of more skydiving and other types of adventures. Sadly, I ended up settling back into my quiet, boring but peaceful life.
- ghemsley 7y agoThis headline makes me happy. I want more of science to be tiny-car based.