
Rats love driving tiny cars, even when they don’t get treats - cscurmudgeon
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/these-rats-learned-to-drive-tiny-cars-for-science/
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ape4
We have posts today about self driving cars (that cost billions in
development) and rat driven cars (that probably cost under a thousand). Rats
have a native understanding of snow, rain and other bad weather.

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rantwasp
what are you saying? self driving rat cars?

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sillysaurusx
It would be pretty interesting to scale up the experiment. Making a control
scheme for rats in a full-size car wouldn’t be too hard. But you might have to
progressively train them on larger and larger vehicles.

Careful not to let it out of the lab though, otherwise it might become aware
of how much power it’s been given. Most powerful rat in history. :)

Imagine being a rat in a full-size car. It must feel like you’re driving a
house.

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rantwasp
talking about the rat race

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doitLP
Footage:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VYErLcG6aCQ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VYErLcG6aCQ)

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shrubble
So basically the character of the mouse Stuart Little , which is a nice
children's book that is a classic and was written by E.B. White, does have a
limited basis in reality?

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weregiraffe
My therapist: rats driving tiny cars aren't real, they can't hurt you

Rats driving tiny cars:

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edoo
Make a rat city with houses where they can sleep and different buildings they
can go to for food and water, but make it so they can only drive to different
buildings.

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masonic
Existing rat populations would never allow this due to NIMBYism and would use
zoning to stop it.

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Cheyana
Imagine if they teach them how to pilot drones. They’ll be like Air Force
pilots, complete with attitude. Not just well-adjusted but also more willing
to take risks. My first and only skydiving experience I had an adrenaline high
that lasted all day, with visions of more skydiving and other types of
adventures. Sadly, I ended up settling back into my quiet, boring but peaceful
life.

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RickJWagner
A short while back I would have thought this to be intuitive. I love to drive,
and have wanted to do it since my teens.

But then my kids and their friends came along. They don't love to drive! No
cruising Main street. They do their socializing on the phone.

So maybe the rats are just old school?

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nyxtom
This is the best experiment. I can now live happy knowing rats have learned
how to drive a small rat car to deal with stress. It’s no wonder, it looks
like a lot of fun for them

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johnchristopher
Cool ! Can it be weaponized ? I mean, could it do better than some
hypothetical tiny AI controlled robots in, e.g., earthquakes rescue missions ?

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grogenaut
They had pidgeon guided bombs and missiles in ww2

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon)

I laughed a bit when I saw the project head... Of course that's who.

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mftrhu
They were never built, but during that period people had _absolutely wild_
ideas. Great Britain was considering building 10 kton _nuclear mines_ , to be
buried along the borders of Germany and to be detonated in case of a Soviet
invasion.

Even if buried, those mines would just end up freezing, so some bright mind
came up with the idea of putting _live chicken_ inside them, to keep the
temperature up.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock)

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lostlogin
The bat bombs were tested, with entirely predictable results.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb)

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ghemsley
This headline makes me happy. I want more of science to be tiny-car based.

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maxerickson
Did anybody read the paper?

What was the activity pattern they used to establish the baseline measurements
for the hormones?

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ChrisSD
If you click the DOI link at the bottom of the article it'll take you to a
page where you can download the PDF.

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maxerickson
Thanks. I swear I looked last time this was discussed and there was a nice fat
charge to download it.

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1996
After healing cancer, diabetis and alzheimers in rats, now we are giving them
cars.

This is going too far!

