Mark Megahan
The rat race is moving fast in one University of Richmond lab. Kelly Lambert, a professor of behavioral neuroscience, taught her rodents to drive. They’ve been running the experiment for the past five years and it’s making headlines again. The rats have new and improved cars to race around in.
Souped up Rat Mobile
The neuroscience lab at University of Richmond just got a new line of “Rat Mobile” rodent-operated vehicles. Kelly Lambert is thrilled. The professor of behavioral neuroscience has been leading the project all along.
She first caught the nation’s attention in 2019 with “a series of experiments that placed rats in the driver’s seat.”
In the beginning of the experiment, “the researchers originally built a simple vehicle made from a plastic jar, stuck on top of an aluminum plate, with wheels attached.”
Since no rat had ever driven any vehicle before, they had to make it simple. That worked for them too, because they never had to design a car to be driven by rats before. The original prototype “used a copper wire to close a circuit and make the car move.”
After the critters mastered the art of acceleration, it was time to teach them steering. “Rats were given three bars to press – one to make the vehicle move forward, one to make it turn right, and one to make it turn left.”
It’s easy to motivate a rat with Froot Loops. Lambert’s “observations of how these whiskered chauffeurs behaved behind the wheel may provide key insights into how joy and anticipation benefit our brains.”
Operant conditioning
The driver’s ed program for rats uses tried and true “operant conditioning” methods. Each rat is individually trained step-by-step using “incentives to reinforce behaviors.”
They didn’t need a whole lot of incentive. It turns out that rats love to drive so much they’ll do just about anything for the privilege.
“Initially, they learned basic movements, such as climbing into the car and pressing a lever. But with practice, these simple actions evolved into more complex behaviors, such as steering the car toward a specific destination.” Her rats aren’t the only ones in captivity who can drive.
Someone in the private sector decided to build a rat racer of their own for their pets. It’s styled to look like a taxi. Without being used for any research, those rats drive around all over the place, any chance they get. Totally for the fun of it.
As the lab rats’ skills improved, so did their vehicles. Lambert “designed a control experiment to determine if rats were enjoying the ride or the cereal reward more.”
When given a short path to the reward on foot, almost every rat in the lab preferred to take the longer drive, “suggesting that for the rats the journey was as enjoyable as the reward.“
