Skip to main content

Rats know when they’ve forgotten something, just like humans

Rats know when they’ve forgotten something. Rats are aware of what they remember, and behave differently when they can’t remember.

Researcher Victoria Templer and her research team at Providence College, in Rhode Island in America, trained rats to dig through sand to sniff four samples: (1) cinnamon, (2) thyme, (3) paprika or (4) coffee. The rats then had go to a dish smelling of the matching scent. If the rats picked the correct dish, they got a piece of cereal (New Scientist, 14 July 2017).

Rats that chose a dish with the wrong scent received no reward. Rats that went to a fifth, unscented dish received a quarter-piece of the cereal. This meant that when rats forgot what they had smelled in the sand, their best choice was to pick the unscented dish – but only if they knew that they had forgotten the relevant smell.

Nine rats were each tested many times across multiple experiments. In some of these, the unscented dish was not there, forcing the rats to choose a scent even if they couldn’t remember it. Without the unscented option, the rats picked the correct dish 52% of the time.

When the fifth, unscented dish was available, the rats chose the unscented option 20% of the time. In those cases where they chose a scented dish, the rate of picking the right dish increased to 61% of the time – an increase that wouldn’t be expected by chance alone.

Because the rats’ performance improved when the unscented dish was available as an opt-out, Templer says this shows that the rats weren’t simply choosing the unscented dish for no reason. They seem to have known that declaring that they had forgotten the smell would still earn them a small reward.

In further experiments, the research team found that letting the rats sniff the sample twice before choosing a match reduced how often they chose the unscented dish. But making the rats wait longer between sniffing the sample and choosing a match pushed up the number of times they opted out.

People and some primates (apes) have “metamemory” – the ability to know what they remember. However, whether rats have it too had been unclear, and this latest study suggests that they might.

People with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia often don’t realise when they have forgotten something, so a test for metamemory in rats could be useful for rodent studies of these conditions.

Journal reference: Animal Cognition, DOI: 10.1007/s10071-017-1109-3

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140795-rats-can-tell-when-theyve-forgotten-something-just-like-us/


MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pir-E-Kamil - The Perfect Mentor by Umera Ahmed: book review

The Perfect Mentor pbuh  (2011) is set in Lahore and Islamabad in Pakistan. The novel commences with Imama Mubeen in medical university. She wants to be an eye specialist. Her parents have arranged for her to marry her first cousin Asjad. Salar Sikander, her neighbour, is 18 years old with an IQ of 150+ and a photographic memory. He has long hair tied in a ponytail. He imbibes alcohol, treats women disrespectfully and is generally a “weird chap” and a rude, belligerent teenager. In the past three years he has tried to commit suicide three times. He tries again. Imama and her brother, Waseem, answer the servant’s call to help Salar. They stop the bleeding from his wrist and save his life. Imama and Asjad have been engaged for three years, because she wants to finish her studies first. Imama is really delaying her marriage to Asjad because she loves Jalal Ansar. She proposes to him and he says yes. But he knows his parents won’t agree, nor will Imama’s parents. That
1 comment
Read more

Flaws in the Glass, a self-portrait by Patrick White: book review

The manuscript, Flaws in the Glass (1981), is Patrick Victor Martindale White’s autobiography. White, born in 1912 in England, migrated to Sydney, Australia, when he was six months old. For three years, at the age of 20, he studied French and German literature at King’s College at the University of Cambridge in England. Throughout his life, he published 12 novels. In 1957 he won the inaugural Miles Franklin Literary Award for Voss, published in 1956. In 1961, Riders in the Chariot became a best-seller, winning the Miles Franklin Literary Award. In 1973, he was the first Australian author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for The Eye of the Storm, despite many critics describing his works as ‘un-Australian’ and himself as ‘Australia’s most unreadable novelist.’ In 1979, The Twyborn Affair was short-listed for the Booker Prize, but he withdrew it from the competition to give younger writers the opportunity to win the award. His autobiography, Flaws in the Glass
Post a Comment
Read more

The Beggars' Strike by Aminata Sow Fall: book review

The Beggar’sStrike (1979 in French and 1981 in English) is set in an unstated country in West Africa in a city known only as The Capital. Undoubtedly, Senegalese author Sow Fall writes of her own experiences. It was also encapsulated in the 2000 film, Battu , directed by Cheick Oumar Sissoko from Mali. Mour Ndiaye is the Director of the Department of Public Health and Hygiene, with the opportunity of a distinguished and coveted promotion to Vice-President of the Republic. Tourism has declined and the government blames the local beggars in The Capital. Ndiaye must rid the streets of beggars, according to a decree from the Minister. Ndiaye instructs his department to carry out weekly raids. One of the raids leads to the death of lame beggar, Madiabel, who ran into an oncoming vehicle as he tried to escape, leaving two wives and eight children. Soon after, another raid resulted in the death of the old well-loved, comic beggar Papa Gorgui Diop. Enough is enou
8 comments
Read more