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Researchers Turn Mice Into Wine Snobs
Unsatisfied with the number of reasons people have to hate rodents already, scientists at Japan's Hiroshima University have taught mice to be wine snobs. After being trained to pick red wine over other kinds the mice were taught to distinguish between brands. From the article: "We examined performance of mice in discrimination of liquor odors by Y-maze behavioral assays. Thirsty mice were initially trained to choose the odor of a red wine in the Y-maze. After successful training (>70% concordance for each trained mouse), the individual mice were able to discriminate the learned red wine from other liquors, including white wine, rosé wine, sake, and plum liqueur."
"My name is Mickey Mouse, and I'm an alcoholic."
Fruity, with a dash of buck-toothed pretentious asshole. Yes, yes, a wonderful vintage indeed.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Not only that but the proximity of the olfactory bulbs to the amygdala allows the pairing of scent with emotion and reward learning to be very effective.
Researchers turn mice into winos
Fixed that for them.
Get a web developer
How much did we spend on this?
It depends.
Are you Japanese? If not, then "we" spent nothing on this.
If you are, then a lot of it depends on how the study was funded, and why it was performed. TFA is not very informative on that point.
Was this a grad student project that a few grad students needed to get some lab time under their belts, or a government-funded study? If it's a grad student study, then the expected result of the study was to spend a few dozen hours in the lab (the presence of alcohol probably made the boredom of the study more manageable) and get a passing grade on a research report. That there was any interesting science that emerged from a student's work is purely coincidental. If there's a use for this behavioral information, it would be a bonus.
Not every grad project is going to cure cancer, or even set out to cure it.
If this is a government-funded study, there may (or may not) be a larger goal at work. Perhaps it was a cheap way to see how sensitively mice could discern chemical scent patterns, without actually asking the scientists to work with Sarin ingredients or explosives? Maybe the school administration was doing a mouse study to pattern the behavior of undergrad students when they learn alcohol is in the building?
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
If I were to guess, its for the war on terror and the war on drugs.
Most people don't realize that if we were serious about either, you wouldn't see dogs at airports and in the back of squad cars. In fact, you would see pigs. Pigs are more easily trained, have a better sense of smell, and have been proven to do the job equally, if not better. Pigs are also thought to be smarter than dogs and as such, learn faster; which in turn drives down training costs.
Along these lines, which brings us full circle, I recently saw a blurb on the news specifically talking about small rodents being used to sniff luggage at airports.
people don't like the idea of a swarm of mice crawling over their luggage every time they fly.
I'm sure they'll like the idea of a swarm of mice crawling over their table when they dine even less...
Lucky they didn't train them to use Macs. The Japanese are sadistic bastards who eat dolphins alive but that would be going too far even for them.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Right. Because in point of fact, wine snobs can't do so:
You're better off with the trained mice.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood