A Game That Made Rats Jump for Joy

&gt; How does the animal decide where it wants to seek, or whether it wants to hide? Or what happens when it’s surprised? When it thinks it knows where the experimenter is, what happens in its brain when she isn’t there?<p>These questions at the end really made me a whole lot more interested in this topic.<p>And it&#x27;s interesting to note that she&#x27;s awarding them with tickles, not food. Could it be why the rats found it to be a more &quot;fun&quot; activity? Would they be having fun or would they become more competitive if rewarded with food instead?

I taught our dog to play hide and seek. For the seeking part, I make him sit in the kitchen and wait while I hide with his toy. Then I yell his name and he has to come find me. For the hiding part, he will take his toy and hide it somewhere like under a couch cushion or under a bedsheet. Then he comes and finds me to go looking for it. If I get too close to finding it then he jumps in and snatches it.

This article has videos:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gizmodo.com&#x2F;scientists-taught-rats-to-play-hide-and-seek-and-theyr-1838069088" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gizmodo.com&#x2F;scientists-taught-rats-to-play-hide-and-...</a>

Rats are <i>very</i> good at spatial perception, orientation, and manipulation. I have seen them rival really smart dogs in that respect. They certainly also know how to look at the actions of others (humans, rats, whatever) and model their own behavior accordingly.<p>So this would be right up their alley, and I&#x27;m sure everybody&#x27;s had marvellous fun, another thing of which rats are eminently capable.

I think I&#x27;m even more impressed that someone could touch a rat without jumping backward, scared out of their mind like a child. Maybe that&#x27;s just me :).<p>Tests like this make me wonder about the ethics of being able to perform experiments and tests on rats; clearly these creatures are smart enough to understand a fairly complex game like hide and seek; at what level do we, as a society, determine that this animal is too self-aware to be experimented on, and that doing so would be an act of cruelty.<p>Note: Obviously I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s an act of cruelty play hide and seek with a rat; I&#x27;m talking about testing food additives and whatnot for cancer.

I play hide and seek with my cat and he definitely loves it. He also likes to fetch the rubber balls we have around the house (some of them still hidden in places we don’t know a thing about). Playing with animals is pretty great.

That&#x27;s an exciting, new discovery that I hope won&#x27;t find its application in places like whatever department does behavioural design at Facebook, game developers, marketers to make products more addictive ... kind of like when they found out that rats go crazy with irregular rewards :)

Very kind way to normie animal suffering

The other animals that seem to have a lot of intelligence are crows. They&#x27;re birds but act like social primates: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thedodo.com&#x2F;in-the-wild&#x2F;crows-bring-gifts-to-kind-woman" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thedodo.com&#x2F;in-the-wild&#x2F;crows-bring-gifts-to-kin...</a>.