
Animals in the wild found to use running wheel if given the choice - pwg
http://phys.org/news/2014-05-animals-wild-wheel-choice-video.html
======
jlhonora
Hi there,

If you liked this article perhaps you'll be interested in a project I've been
working on. My wife has a Hedgehog (yeah, like Sonic) and he's pretty shy. He
also has a wheel and runs ALL night.

To feel that he interacts a little more I connected a wireless node with a
magnetic switch so I could count how many laps he runs every night, and
therefore the equivalent distance. Every morning he tweets how much he ran,
just like RunKeeper :)

Check out his twitter account here:
[https://twitter.com/runhedgie](https://twitter.com/runhedgie)

And, of course, the code is hosted on github:
[https://github.com/jlhonora/iot](https://github.com/jlhonora/iot)

I just finished this project yesterday, but I have many more ideas to add. I'd
like to correlate running activity with temperature (hedgies are pretty
sensitive to cold weather) and ambient light. I'd also like to make a public
API so that anyone can analyze his activity patterns.

So, stay tuned and follow!

~~~
Pxtl
... now I feel terrible at slacking off at my jogging. Little guy is like 4
inches tall and running 5.8km last night.

~~~
jlhonora
Well, there's a catch with all of this. The wheel has some inertia, so running
in it should be easier than running the same distance on the floor. The ran
distance is still the same , regardless of this fact.

And I'm trying to keep up with my jogging as well :)

~~~
Someone
A body also has inertia that makes it easier to keep running. The wheel may
have more, but that also means that it takes more effort to bring it up to
speed.

Also, one should take air resistance (of the running body or the spinning
wheel) into account.

~~~
batmansbelt
In physics it's generally safe to assume that all the different air
resistances and drags and so on cancel out. You just draw a force diagram and
everything always cancels, otherwise the hedgehog would have constant
acceleration which we know isn't true.

~~~
angersock
Boundary drag on the wheel as it spins causes a loss of angular momentum, and
so it slows over time unless force is applied (via adorable hedgehog legs) to
keep it constant. Additionally, there are likely normal frictional forces at
the meeting of the wheel and the supports, as I highly doubt they gave the pet
a wheel with magnetic bearings in a vacuum.

And yes, the hedgehog must exert constant force in order to overcome this
viscous friction.

On a related note, this viscous damping term scales as velocity, so the faster
the wheel turns the harder the little thing has to work to keep it at a
constant velocity.

------
rtpg
>The researchers claim the animals ran on the wheels because they enjoyed it,
which could be a little bit of anthropomorphizing, as no one has been able to
prove that animals other than humans experience emotions.

Is this really the state of the art? I thought the entire animal rights
movement is rooted in the idea that animals can experience emotion

This is pretty great research, seeing a slug in a running wheel is
particularly silly

~~~
Lerc
There's proof and proof. No one has managed to prove other humans experience
emotions, or even exist. Given a hypothetical model of a continually
manipulated memory and consciousness you could even argue that you can't prove
that you yourself have emotions (you might merely have the mistaken belief
that you experience them).

To take a more pragmatic approach to proof (good enough but not absolute)
Humans and some animals experience emotions. At the very least most Mammals.
Probably not all animals. A trickier proposition would be whether all
vertebrates do, that's a different level of debate entirely.

If you can't take things like the Monkey fairness tests as a sign of emotions
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg&feature=player_d...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg&feature=player_detailpage#t=75)

then you have a standard of proof that a lot of humans wouldn't meet.

~~~
olouv
I'd highly recommend the Blackfish documentary about killer whales regarding
mammal emotions (trailer:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OEjYquyjcg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OEjYquyjcg)).

Especially this part where a mother is separated from its baby,
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWFo6kf21Hw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWFo6kf21Hw)
; it gives pretty good insight about whether animals can experience emotions.

~~~
meowface
Yep, I absolutely agree. Even if mammal emotions have not been scientifically
"proven", I think there's a lot of strong evidence that they do experience
most or all basic emotions.

It's not like it's very shocking that they would, either, considering humans
aren't that distantly related from them.

~~~
koralatov
As someone who has two cats, and has had a dog and a cat previously, I'm
always amazed when I come across people who categorically state that animals
_don 't_ have emotions. Spend a small amount of time with a cat or a dog, and
it becomes pretty clear that they have moods and emotional states, albeit
simpler ones that humans. I realise that domestication will have changed
animals and their environmental responses, but I find it very hard to believe
that dogs or cats would have developed emotions from scratch in the ~10,000
years since they were domesticated.

In my experience, those who claim animals don't have emotions are usually
justifying some kind of behaviour; in one case, it was a hunter, and another,
someone who was generally unpleasant and cruel to animals. The former was
otherwise a nice guy, though I found his hobby extremely distasteful; the
latter was an irredeemable arsehole.

~~~
gldalmaso
> _In my experience, those who claim animals don 't have emotions are usually
> justifying some kind of behaviour_

I agree. Similar things were said historically to justify slavery.

This poses an interesting ethical question.

If a subject is not known to have emotions or not. Should the party that would
be inflicting emotional pain on the subject have the burden of proof (that the
subject does not in fact have emotions)? Or the party that would not inflict
it?

~~~
meowface
If there's a plausible chance of the entity being able to experience emotion,
then the burden of proof needs to be on the inflicter. "Plausible" because
inanimate objects like rocks obviously cannot ever have emotions.

Things get a little more complicated with plants, such as trees and flowers,
but even there I would say it's pretty implausible that they experience
emotion.

------
ars
Direct links to videos:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5gI1joaCxI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5gI1joaCxI)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNaZvGZubvw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNaZvGZubvw)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KnbD1dmJzk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KnbD1dmJzk)

Not sure why the video were wrapped in another player.

~~~
Ygg2
I loved the slug video. In my mind the slug is making broom brroom noises as
it 'speeds' along the wheel.

------
allworknoplay
Someone should put cubicles out in the woods and test whether random humans
that come along decide to sit at them for fun.

------
warfangle
Egads. I tried to read the article. I really did. But it brought my chrome to
its knees. Ran a quick javascript profile, and the minified function wa() was
taking using 94.16%. Inspecting it, there's a for(;;){} loop that never hits a
break condition.

This only makes me hate phys.org even more than I used to.

~~~
ForHackernews
I use Ghostery, and I got a message: "It appears that you are currently using
Ad Blocking software. What are the consequences? Click here to learn more."

But at least the page loaded.

If any phys.org admins are reading this: I don't mind _seeing_ your ads; I do
object to their tracking me.

------
gjm11
As usual, phys.org is not exactly the best source for this. (I can't think of
any occasion when phys.org has been the best source for _anything_.)

A more informative informal summary of the research can be found at the
GrrlScientist blog
[http://www.theguardian.com/science/grrlscientist/2014/may/21...](http://www.theguardian.com/science/grrlscientist/2014/may/21/wild-
mice-exercise-wheels-behaviour-stereotypy-neurosis).

For those who don't mind the much drier writing style, the full text of the
original scholarly article is at
[http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1786/2014...](http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1786/20140210.full)
(it's quite short) and the "Data supplement" link at the right will get you
the three videos of animals running on the wheel.

HN submitters: When you see something cool on phys.org, before submitting it
ask yourself "Can I find a better source than this for the same story?". Take
two minutes -- google the title of the paper, the author's names, etc. I claim
that at least 75% of the time you'll easily find something that's either
_substantially better_ or _textually more or less identical but closer to the
original source_. Then submit that instead.

~~~
Goladus
The phys.org article includes the link to the original paper.

How is the GrrlScientist blog better than the phys.org article? Based on a
quick scan, it seems more or less equivalent to me in terms of basic
journalism standards. It just looks like a different style and perspective.

What, specifically, is problematic about phys.org?

~~~
gjm11
Yes, the phys.org article includes a link to the original paper. (Did I say or
imply otherwise? If so, I screwed up and I apologize. I didn't mean to.)

The GrrlScientist blog entry is better in (for instance) the following ways.
It gives more context (e.g., Lorenz's earlier observation about formerly-
captive animals running on wheels). It gives more information about the
frequency of wheel-running by different kinds of animal. It is more accurate
on at least one important point (article and GrrlScientist say 200k animal
visits recorded of which 12k used the wheel; phys.org says 200k instances of
animals using the wheel). It mentions, where phys.org doesn't, a very
important finding: wheel-running continued even after the experimenters
stopped putting food near the wheel, so it wasn't just that animals run on the
wheel because they've found food there and think getting into the wheel will
somehow provide more. It describes the article's comparison to wheel running
in lab mice.

On the other hand, it's also more chattily verbose, which might be a good
thing or a bad according to taste.

What's problematic about phys.org is that it's scarcely ever the best source
for anything. Much of its content is recycled press releases, exactly the same
as you can get from (usually) the website of the institution where the work
was done but often with some illustrations removed and extra advertising
added. Sometimes (as here) phys.org does actually write its own material, but
(as here) it's usually more superficial and less informative than one can get
from elsewhere.

There may be cases in which the phys.org writeup is (1) not just recycled from
someone else and (2) the best available account of the matter for some
plausible audience. If so, I just happen never to have encountered any.

[EDITED to add: I am not alone in thinking HN would be better linking to
better sources than phys.org's blogspam. See, e.g., this lengthy collation:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4676259](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4676259).
Full disclosure: some of the critical comments listed there are also mine.]

------
tomaskafka
Well, when you encounter a running wheel for adults along your way, you would
try it too:
[http://www.notempire.com/images/uploads/grasswheel.jpg](http://www.notempire.com/images/uploads/grasswheel.jpg)

... which doesn't suggest that you would enjoy being imprisoned for life in a
tiny cell where there is a, running wheel, bed, food and nothing else.

~~~
dalke
Certainly. That would be a different study though. The hypothesis that this
study investigated is:

> If wheel running is indeed caused by captive housing, wild mice are not
> expected to use a running wheel in nature. This however, to our knowledge,
> has never been tested. Here, we show that when running wheels are placed in
> nature, they are frequently used by wild mice, also when no extrinsic reward
> is provided. Bout lengths of running wheel behaviour in the wild match those
> for captive mice. This finding falsifies one criterion for stereotypic
> behaviour, and suggests that running wheel activity is an elective
> behaviour.

------
ekianjo
The frog video made me laugh. It's a great experiment and this is something
really new about wild animal behavior.

------
bsenftner
Consider the normal use of running for an animal: running for prey, running to
not be prey... Yet, we know as humans that running can be enjoyable. For an
animal, running is more often associated with hunger and fear of being eaten.
I propose the running wheel presents to the animals a rare "place to run
safely". Normally, running transports an animal into new, potentially unsafe
locations. This running wheel was both in an enclosure, and the wheel itself
offers protection from attack. I wager that 18 minute run was a mouse
experiencing the joy of running without fear for the first time, and was
exhilarated.

~~~
conroe64
You presuppose the wild animal can understand a running wheel, something it
never encountered before.

The mice, on seeing something novel, did what that normally do and try to
climb all over it looking for food. They then got stuck running on it, not
realizing they were getting nowhere.

------
tinkerdol
If they put a human-sized one of these around my residence, I'd run in it.

~~~
thomasahle
I have one nearby, and it's great! (I can't do more than a few seconds without
falling over though)

~~~
Someone
I always thought those things were impossible to run in because the rotational
inertia of the wheel is way higher than the inertia of one running in it. That
requires you to run at almost constant speed (if your foot stays a bit longer
on the ground, you do not decelerate the wheel much, but your feet ends up a
few centimeters backwards. Repeat for two or three steps, and you lose your
balance).

That changed when I saw the Ukrainian entry for this year's Eurovision contest
([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5DhH0jWyfk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5DhH0jWyfk)).
On the other hand, that wheel is smaller and likely has way less rotational
inertia than the ones one finds in the typical playground, and probably also
has less rolling resistance. That guy must have trained, if only to make it
look effortless, but it may be easier than one would think it is.

------
gosub
I would imagine that the sudden appearance of food and new environment
elements would set the mind of any animal in a "run around and explore" mode,
especially for species living near humans.

~~~
ars
The wheel was there for 3 years.

~~~
lawlessone
And one of them ran for up to 18 minutes.

~~~
rando289
2 wheels, used by 200,000 animals, which has got to be a typo, cuz thats on
average 137 animals per hour.

~~~
barrkel
2 wheels, 3 years, 200,000 animals is an average of 3.8 per hour.

------
smackay
The article seems overly political in trying to refute the claim that
laboratory animals run on wheels because they are driven insane by their
environment. However ultimately they are undermining their position because it
begs the question, "If animals like to have fun, should we really be doing
experiments on them?". This is probably a lot easier to grasp by the general
public than the more nebulous concept of whether animals experience emotions.

~~~
DougBTX
> the more nebulous concept of whether animals experience emotions

Is there debate about that? I suppose I took it as a given, hence all the
efforts people go through to treat lab animals humanely.

~~~
smackay
I agree this debate is already over. However I think this simplifies the issue
enormously and makes it a lot more likely that general public opinion can be
mustered against animal testing. If you tell the tell the future adults of
this world that animals like to play and have fun then ask them whether it is
right that animals are experimented on then the answer, for good or for ill,
is going to be a resounding no.

------
Aardwolf
I see opportunities for new ways to generate electricity :)

~~~
daliusd
"My Tesla is using environment friendly electricity. It is slug powered"

~~~
a_c_s
And it only takes 16.3 years to recharge!

------
erikb
I wonder if the same free animal would enjoy it for a long time or if it is
merely the excitement of something new.

------
bluerobotcat
Thanks to this research I feel slightly less weird for preferring to run on a
treadmill.

------
Shorel
Now we need to make giant wheels for dogs!

------
hellbreakslose
Well I can see why, as the research states at the end animals enjoyed it.

If we see it in a scale, it's like for us humans going on a roller coaster!

------
gosub
_Still, the experiments should put to rest the argument about whether mice in
the lab are running on wheels because they live in cages—they 'll do it
anywhere they find one_

and

 _They also put the wheel inside an enclosure with a small entranceway to keep
large animals from knocking the wheel on its side_

~~~
Houshalter
They mean because they are trapped in the cage and can't run anywhere else.
Not that it's just in an enclosed area.

