valaraukarsbane
Active Member
I'm sure everyone who has seriously spent time with rats knows that rats are extremely smart. Smart enough to get into places and trouble we never would have imagined possible, and smart enough to learn to manipulate their humans and get them wrapped around their little paw.
But scientists have discovered something else interesting about rats. Now let me preface this by saying that I do NOT support or condone experimenting on animals, including rats, especially when the experiment is stressful or painful for the animal. However, this experiment seems fairly benign (no pain, minimal stress), and the result is quite interesting, so I am mentioning it anyway - with the reservation that I don't mean to condone animal tests or to offend others who, like me, feel cx. I just wish I could remember the reference for where I read about this.
Anyway, what the scientists found was that rats have metacognition. What is metacognition? Essentially it means the ability to analyse one's own cognitive abilities and knowledge. Example: if you had a class of human students who were about to take a test, they would be able to tell you whether they felt well prepared or ill prepared. You would find that most of those who felt well prepared did well, and most of those who felt ill prepared did badly. This is their metacognition at work: we humans don't simply know things, we are aware that we know them.
So the scientists tested for this ability in rats. They gave rats tests, but with the following choice: the rat could opt out of taking the test. If the rat opted out, it would get a small reward. If it took the test and passed, it got a large reward, but if it took it and failed, it got no reward. I don't recall all the details, but basically they found that the rats could predict fairly accurately whether they were prepared for the tests.
Rats are the first non-primate to be discovered to have metacognition, I believe.
Now, humans like myself who have spent time around rats will not be shocked by this result at all.
But scientists have discovered something else interesting about rats. Now let me preface this by saying that I do NOT support or condone experimenting on animals, including rats, especially when the experiment is stressful or painful for the animal. However, this experiment seems fairly benign (no pain, minimal stress), and the result is quite interesting, so I am mentioning it anyway - with the reservation that I don't mean to condone animal tests or to offend others who, like me, feel cx. I just wish I could remember the reference for where I read about this.
Anyway, what the scientists found was that rats have metacognition. What is metacognition? Essentially it means the ability to analyse one's own cognitive abilities and knowledge. Example: if you had a class of human students who were about to take a test, they would be able to tell you whether they felt well prepared or ill prepared. You would find that most of those who felt well prepared did well, and most of those who felt ill prepared did badly. This is their metacognition at work: we humans don't simply know things, we are aware that we know them.
So the scientists tested for this ability in rats. They gave rats tests, but with the following choice: the rat could opt out of taking the test. If the rat opted out, it would get a small reward. If it took the test and passed, it got a large reward, but if it took it and failed, it got no reward. I don't recall all the details, but basically they found that the rats could predict fairly accurately whether they were prepared for the tests.
Rats are the first non-primate to be discovered to have metacognition, I believe.
Now, humans like myself who have spent time around rats will not be shocked by this result at all.
