
Rats taught to drive tiny cars to lower their stress levels - isp
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50167812
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hn_throwaway_99
Earlier thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21341057](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21341057)

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telesilla
With earlier video link that was the highlight for me:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DINEwuxbI-E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DINEwuxbI-E)

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tvanantwerp
I'm imagining a ridiculous sci-fi future where self-driving car AI never
satisfactorily works, so we just stick trained rats in the dashboard.

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pvaldes
Training rats as suicide bombers to crash cars against cats seem a more
probable result.

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blotter_paper
Why not planes?

The food bowl was a legitimate military target; it provided nutrients that the
cats used to build better claws.

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pvaldes
Small airplanes piloted by catikazes with tiny machine guns (rat-rat-tat) is
scheduled for the second part of the experiment as a source of rodent stress

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breadandcrumbel
You'd have to wonder what would happen to their stress levels if they were
subjected to traffic....

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hsnewman
A good test would be to have them drive in Austin.

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hombre_fatal
You are spoiled if Austin is your go-to example of bad traffic.

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gabyar
The amazing thing here is that rats are intelligent enough to learn to drive,
albeit a simple vehicle. That alone is newsworthy, without the experiment on
stress reduction.

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blotter_paper
Ehh, it's not clear to me that humans should be particularly good a driving.
It's not like we evolved for it, we can just understand spoken instructions.
I'm not convinced that an octopus, a dolphin, a raven, or a cheetah would
necessarily be worse at the task than a human (given training in the proper
format) -- it's perfectly concievable to me that a cheetah might have evolved
to handle object avoidance at higher speeds than humans have, for example.

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rossdavidh
<insert joke about new Uber/Lyft business model here>

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rpmisms
Yes, driving is a good de-stressor, probably because it gives you more agency
when you feel powerless.

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nineumbrellas
I recently setup a racing sim rig and love to just cruise around after work as
I don't have a real car. Absolutely de-stresses me.

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rpmisms
That's probably smarter than my after-work "tire warmups".

In the winter here, I tend to slide around corners, too. I live in a rural
area, so it's not too dangerous, but it's something to do.

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nitrogen
Definitely fun, but do keep in mind the amount of noise that generates and
keep it to a minimum when within a mile of people. I used to live on a rural
road with like six other houses, and people going 100 down a 35 with houses
does get kind of old.

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rpmisms
I have my favorite empty county roads. No houses for miles, great visibility.
I prefer going to the south and driving on old banked mountain roads, though.
Most people can't even get to the speed limit safely on those.

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bobloblaw45
I bet they're more like 4 wheelers or golf carts to rats than cars. I think
they're simply just having fun. Or maybe it's similar to the whole pavlov's
dog thing, drive a car and get a treat. Eventually driving is associated with
treats.

Now it would be interesting to see them making the rats drive to something
stressful like us having to go to work has an effect on stress. Then maybe
developing a Rat uber to see if riding in a rat car to a treat will have a net
gain or loss on stress....okay I just wanted an excuse to mention rat uber in
that last sentence.

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tremon
_a rat would sit on the aluminium plate and touch the copper wire. The circuit
was then complete_

I do wonder if they had a control group with just this electrocution step,
otherwise I don't see how they can relate any of the results to the driving.

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05
No reason no believe rats are sensitive to currents measured in single
microamps, which is what’s most likely used to trigger microcontroller inputs.
Whatever the schematic, I can guarantee that the rat isn’t used to directly
connect the motor to the battery :)

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BurningFrog
When pigeons guided bombs:

[https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/08/25/pigeons-guided-
bom...](https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/08/25/pigeons-guided-bomb/)

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leoc
Rat-guided cars? B.F. Skinner will give you a small food reward if you hold
his beer. [http://cyberneticzoo.com/bionics/1940-project-
pigeon-1948-pr...](http://cyberneticzoo.com/bionics/1940-project-
pigeon-1948-project-orcon-b-f-skinner-american/)

Actually, come to think of it Project Pigeon/Orcon is also of philosophical
importance: it joins Russell's chickens as an example of the hazards of
inductive reasoning and greedy algorithms.

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edoo
I bet this could be extended to mice scale mechs where they learn to (without
harm) battle each other in arenas for treats while you stream it on the
darkweb and take bets.

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pvaldes
Now put two rats frolicking in the back sit of a tiny Chevrolet for a full de-
stressing treatment.

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starvingbear
good news everyone

