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Scientists Find Rats Aren't Smarter Than Mice, and That's Important
HughPickens.com writes: There has long been a clear hierarchy of intelligence in the psychology lab, with monkeys are at the top, then rats, and finally mice at the bottom, "cute and fluffy but not all that bright." For at least a hundred years, researchers have used rats in their psychology experiments, assuming that they were the smarter of the two lab rodents. Now, Rose Eveleth reports at The Atlantic that new research shows this might not be true, suggesting mice can perform decision-making tasks in the lab just as well as rats can. "Anything we could train a rat to do we could train a mouse to do as well," says Tony Zador. This finding is important because using mice in experiments instead of rats could open up all kinds of new research options. For one thing, scientists have been able to manipulate a mouse's genome in really useful ways, silencing certain genes to figure out what role they play. There are mouse models for everything from Alzheimer's to Parkinson's. Being able to put those mice through the paces of a psychology experiment could help researchers connect diseases with the behaviors they impact.
So where did this idea that rats are smarter than mice come from, anyway? Zador says it's a historical bias. "There was 100 years of practice in training rats. And basically when people tried to treat the mice in exactly the way they treated the rats, the rats seemed smarter," says Zador. In other words, "over the course of 100 years people had figured out how to train rats, and that mice aren't rats." You might think that mice and rats would be basically the same when it comes to these kinds of things, but Zador points out that mice and rats diverged somewhere between 12 and 24 million years ago. For comparison, humans and chimpanzees split somewhere between 5 and 7 million years ago. So it's no surprise that mice behave differently than rats, and that the difference impacts their training in the lab. "The mouse is uniquely placed at the interface between experimental access and behavioral complexity, making it an ideal model for the study of adaptive decision-making. Successful behavioral paradigms, however, rely on targeting designs to the idiosyncrasies of the mouse from the outset, rather than simply assuming that mice are little rats."
So where did this idea that rats are smarter than mice come from, anyway? Zador says it's a historical bias. "There was 100 years of practice in training rats. And basically when people tried to treat the mice in exactly the way they treated the rats, the rats seemed smarter," says Zador. In other words, "over the course of 100 years people had figured out how to train rats, and that mice aren't rats." You might think that mice and rats would be basically the same when it comes to these kinds of things, but Zador points out that mice and rats diverged somewhere between 12 and 24 million years ago. For comparison, humans and chimpanzees split somewhere between 5 and 7 million years ago. So it's no surprise that mice behave differently than rats, and that the difference impacts their training in the lab. "The mouse is uniquely placed at the interface between experimental access and behavioral complexity, making it an ideal model for the study of adaptive decision-making. Successful behavioral paradigms, however, rely on targeting designs to the idiosyncrasies of the mouse from the outset, rather than simply assuming that mice are little rats."
Here's my argument: experiments that depend on measuring problem solving and it's interaction with the brain have never really been better from smarter creatures. What's most useful is behavioral consistency. Between members of the species, and with one individual's performance. The more predictable the baseline is, the more useful results you can extract from fewer tests against your control group.
Sure some thins are too complicated to hope to model so simplistically, like cultural learning, empathy, and most of the other things we use primate models for.
Whoa whoa whoa... We know that for sure now? With real quantifiable evidence, that I can see without a paywall? I musta slept through that part of the newcast... Somebody clue me in...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Because there are some things rats just wont do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
The rat has an estimated 200E6 Neurons and 4.48E11 synapses, and the mouse has 71E6 neurons and ~1E11 synapses.
There is at least some correlation between intelligence and the number of neurons. A cursory search found this: -- Fact or Fiction: When It Comes to Intelligence, Does Brain Size Matte? http://www.scientificamerican....
It would be interesting to find more definitive articles that support or contrast this.
...mice and rats diverged somewhere between 12 and 24 million years ago.
It'd be nice if my field's conclusions could be this broad...
Between this range and the fact that every reproduction is a "divergence", and so the baseline here seems to be divergence from one arbitrary cluster of characteristics given a latin name, and another arbitrary cluster of characteristics given a different latin name...
What does this even mean?
Yes, I know. I'll be shortly told I'm too dumb to understand, instead of an explanation. Fair enough, stipulated. Now go ahead and inform me of stuff.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
I always new that show was real.
But it takes more than brains to get out of NIMH. you need to be big enough to not get sucked into the ventilation system.
I was once in a position to observe a larger and more significant population of mice. While a population of 10 wasn't large enough to observe the appearance of a "prodigy", a population of roughly 100 was.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
As someone who's had both rats and mice as pets, rats are much more comfortable being handled and are somewhat affectionate. Mice tend to be jumpy and skittish and don't seem to bond to people so much. Lab mice are very retarded and slow (for very good reasons) compared to wild caught mice or their offspring.
Mice might be as smart, but rats are much more fun to work with.
You forgot
0. Whiny depressed robot with a brain the size of a planet.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Yeah, I've never understood why that should be. It's not like a larger body has more degrees of freedom to coordinate, and I'm pretty sure the motor control nerves also serve as signal amplifiers, so you don't need more brain cells to drive a larger muscle. The only thing I can think of that might scale with size is the number of sensory nerves in the skin - which would suggest that the portion of the brain associated with processing the input should scale with the square of linear size (or alternately with the 2/3 power of mass).
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
But then it's much harder to extrapolate the results to humans.
If you RTFA, they are getting their consent:
If they didn't want to participate in the testing, they were free to do so by not sticking their noses in the start port.
Mice are smart enough to con researchers into using rats instead. Proof that Douglas Adams was correct..
"You might think that mice and rats would be basically the same when it comes to these kinds of things" [About training the two species]
It doesn't seem like it makes much sense to believe that rats and mice are different enough for one species to be measurably smarter than the other, but not to also believe that they're different enough to have different behavior patterns and responses to various stimuli.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
What did one lab rat say to the other? I've got my scientist so well trained that every time I push the buzzer, he brings me a snack
I'm pretty sure that any parents with young children know how this works. :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
What did one lab rat say to the other?
I've got my scientist so well trained that every time I push the buzzer, he brings me a snack
There is actually some truth to this. I have had both rats and mice as pets. They may be equally smart, but they interact with humans very differently. A rat that is handled regularly can become very tame. My rat would curl in my lap to sleep. If hand raised rat escapes from its cage, it will seek out humans, and beg for both food and companionship. I have never seen that behavior in mice. They don't like to be picked up or handled, and they don't bond with humans.
It is similar to the difference between dogs and cats. They are about average in intelligence, but dogs are far easier to train, because they care about pleasing humans, and cats don't.
we can pay a mouse 1/3 fewer pellets, pack them into 1/5 the space, and still be just as abusive!
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I used to work a small zoo. We fed the python snakes either rats or mice. Mostly live animals, since it was hard to get the snakes to eat otherwise. The mice didn't seem to even notice the snakes. They often climbed all over the curled snakes. I remember at one time a mouse climbed up on top and sat on the head of the python and cleaned itself. (before it got eaten)
The rats on the other hand immediately detected the snake as a threat. They hid behind things, keeping themselves obscured from direct line of sight of the snakes.
I have also had both rats and mice as pets. The rat I could teach to come to me when I whistled, the mice not so much... though maybe that was because I never tried to really train the mice. But I'm not convinced.
very funny
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
That's nothing. I trained my scientist to think that mice are as smart as rats. Can you believe it? Mice! So anyway, now they're doing all the gene/intelligence research on them instead.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
"There has long been a clear hierarchy of intelligence in the psychology lab, with monkeys are at the top, then rats, and finally mice at the bottom, "cute and fluffy but not all that bright."
So where do the scientists fit in? Somewhere in the middle? Just above rats? Hmm...
-3. Guide Mark II
-2. Earth (a planet (or two))
-1. Marvin (robot with a brain the size of a planet.)
0. Deep Thought
1. Mice
2. Dolphins
3. Humans
4. God, (before the puff of logic.)
Having worked in labs with both mice and rats, I'll take a nice Sprague-Dawley any day. They're like little dogs: they hang out, they like to be petted, they're clean and smell nice.
On the other hand, as soon as you lift the lid off the mouse cage, one of those little buggers levitates three feet in the air and rockets off in a random direction, probably sinking their teeth into someone's earlobe. No thanks.
Slartibartfast: [talking about the Earth] Best laid plans of mice.
Arthur: And men.
Slartibartfast: What?
Arthur: Best laid plans of mice and men.
Slartibartfast: Oh. No, I don't think men had much to do with it.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
No, there's a movie about it: the smart rats all escaped to some farm. They're fine.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Are you smart enough to see the difference between intentionally and knowingly harming things and unknowingly doing so when going about your life? Are you consistent enough to see that we actually acknowledge this difference in our own legal system?
If they didn't want to participate in the testing, they were free to do so by not sticking their noses in the start port.
Not strictly true. See, the trick is to just not put a water bottle into the cage and make water the reward.
Well, it has to be said for them that they breed profusely and one does not grow attached to them.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
They still recieved water without doing the test, just not as much. By your logic, if someon offers pizza to help them move, they're forcing me to help them.
"Hey you humans. There's a mouse over there. He's really smart. Why don't you fuck with him for a change?" Its the same logic I use when the wife asks me to do something around the house. Mess up a couple of times and she stops asking.
Have gnu, will travel.
I don't think any proper scientists has thought in terms of a hierarchy of intelligence since we discovered that quantifying intelligence was harder than we thought (about a century ago).
But I could certainly see journalists thinking in those terms.
Well, let's just say that if you were carefully regulated to recieve just enough food to not have any strong malnourishment symptoms but still be pretty damn hungry - unless you help with the move and get a pizza on top, then consent is maybe not the right word. You are by no means forced but you'll still be pretty motivated to help - much less than if you could just eat as much as you liked. Which can be seen by the fact that the mice were participating less on mondays - after they had free access to water on the weekend.
I'm not saying it's particularly cruel, especially since the tests appeared to be harmless, but still, it's a crude but effective way to ensure the mice don't just sit in the corner bored but actually do a high test repeat...
Just for grins, I looked up the difference between mice and rats on Google. It turns out, rats can play the saxophone! Who knew? https://www.google.com/#q=mous...
The paper actually doesn't even make the claim that rats and mice are equivalently intelligent, just that they were able to train mice to do the same things that they could train rats to do.
Their data show: 1) it took twice as long for the mice to learn as it did for the rats, 2) mice benefited from an additional basic learning stage that the rats did fine without, and 3) mice were more variable in their learning speed, while rats were more consistent.
However, they were working with tasks that had been designed for rats, so maybe there are tasks that mice learn faster and more consistently. (The comparison you make with dogs versus cats is very apt here, the two species have different behavior and motivation profiles that vary the ease of training specific tasks.)
A more accurate headline would have been "Mice can learn the same behaviors as rats". The hope is that mice will be trainable to a level of complexity that is competitive with the levels useful in research on rats, since mouse modelling of genetic diseases is so much more advanced.
OK, who thought of this song first upon reading the summary?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
(I have no idea which of the versions listed I've heard.. maybe the Muppet show.. but it's one of those songs where I definitely haven't seen the _original_, or at least not in its entirety, but still know the song.)
I'm pretty sure the motor control nerves also serve as signal amplifiers, so you don't need more brain cells to drive a larger muscle.
Not necessarily. I can easily imagine larger creatures needing finer motor control compared to their size (note that large humans are often described as "clumsy" and small humans as "graceful"). In a similar vein, I know one proposed theory about why humans are so much weaker than chimpanzees is because we dedicate way more brainpower to fine motor control (one source: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/...).
do you lead a pesticide-free existence? .....
said by the biggest pesticide on earth.
Interesting. I've had the opposite result with mice. I can get the young ones easy, but the old wily ones I got to trick some how. The last infestation I had to deal with was 11 mice. The very last mouse I killed was this big fat misshapen guy who ran slowly and in a straight line. No dodging, no attempt to hide. I literally dropped a trap right in front of him and he walked into it.
My interpretation is that that mouse family was taking care of their disabled relative.
Play Command HQ online
s/pesticide/pest
Given the number of small clumsy people and large graceful ones I've seen, I think that's more of a media meme and/or perceptual preconception than an actual trend...
That's an interesting article though, I hadn't thought of the fine muscle control aspect. I suppose neurons do pretty much fire in an all-or-nothing fashion, so it makes sense that if you want a more graduated response you need more nerves to be able to trigger smaller clusters of muscle fiber. A corollary to their theory about apes strength would seem to be that our relative weakness might not be an inherent limit, but a coordination issue. Presumably if all the muscle fibers are still wired up, and if the strength and proportional number is comparable to a chimps then we should, in theory, be able to exert a proportionally comparable force - we would just need to send the activation signal to all the fibers simultaneously. And presumably some aspect of the fine muscle control system interferes with our ability to activate all the "command lines" at once.
I wonder if that might not be something that could be altered somehow - either through biofeedback training or cruder direct physical modification. It doesn't seem like having a wider "control bus" should inherently limit the maximum strength, and their are circumstances in which people display "superhuman" strength, so perhaps there is some sort of limiter in play with an optional override that's only triggered in rare circumstances. If you could learn to activate the override voluntarily it could be incredibly useful - of course whether out bones, joints, and tendons could handle that sort of stress on a regular basis is a different question - seems like I've heard of peoples bones snapping during violent seizures. Then again responsible bodybuilders don't seem to have to much trouble, so perhaps its just one of those things you have to build up to, in essence exercising your tendons rather than the muscles themselves.
Hmm, now that I think of it, that might actually be an explanation for people with "wiry strength" - if they don't have a neural "exertion limiter" then they could be using their muscles at full capacity while the rest of us are limited to only engaging 1/3 to 1/2 of our muscle fibers at once. That certainly seems more reasonable than the idea that their muscle fibers are somehow dramatically stronger than the norm - I mean I would think that would involve some serious mechanical differences to achieve, to the point of potentially causing serious problems in "crossbreeds".
Okay, now I've got to go experiment.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Interesting. But from what I can find (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_unit_recruitment#Rate_coding_of_muscle_force) that only allows for a 2- to 4-fold variation in force - not quite all-or-nothing, but severely limited.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
It totally screws up the Secret of Nymh. :_(
Buuuut... They were genetically enhanced rats, so it still works.
It's ok everybody CRISIS AVERTED!!
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
If you're posting here, dare I hope that Slashdot comments will get better in quality?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Most places of employment, it's the rats managing the mice.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
When they see a mouse, they say "Oh look, a baby rat!" (based on actual experience)
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I was doing OK catching mice (with various types of humane type traps, if that makes a difference) but near the end of the forced emigration whoever was left was too clever; managing to get the bait without getting trapped somehow. I finally caught sight of him; it was a chipmunk. Still haven't caught him.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Well, slashdot has some problems displaying posts immediately I guess. I refreshed a few times and the previous comment didn't show up, so I reposted. Then they both show up.
Another example why comment throttling sucks. Just let ppl post. There's no scarcity of resources preventing someone else from posting if I've just posted. The old slashdot reason of "let someone else have a chance!" is a lie, a throwback to an ancient era where people couldn't talk and listen at the same time. But I can post at the same time as someone else, and still read his post. We are not in a 19th century schoolroom. That model was stupid and unfair anyway.
and given that comments are scored and can be filtered by score, the argument that throttling comments cuts down the volume of crap doesn't hold water.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Unless you get their consent first. Just because we're too dumb to have figured out their language yet, doesn't mean we shouldn't treat them with the respect and dignity due to our fellow mortals.
the main thing is, they're too small to fight back, and they can't talk so they don't say "hey, please don't"
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Looking forward to the future, when we will at first succeed in developing an artificial intelligence, with self-awareness; which we will proceed to vivisect and eventually terminate, then repeat the procedure with ever more sophisticated creations.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.