- Note - If you are considering a holdable,
intelligent pet for your children, or even yourself, consider a rat. Smart,
clean, intelligent, affectionate, easy to care for, and will eat practically
anything you do, rats are superior pets (what we all hoped most hamsters
would be). A single rat can be easily be kept in a 15-20 gallon screen
top glass terrarium which can be quickly emptied of pine shavings and Windexed
weekly. (No more smelly wire cages). They love to go places in pockets
or just hang out on your shoulder or lap. Most are smart enough to cage
train themselves almost immediately. This story will come as no surprise
to those who have, or have had, rats as pets. If they were called 'Fuzzies'
(or some other 'cute' name) and had no tails, domesticated rats would probably
be America's favorite small animal companions.
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- Psychologists in the U.S. claim to have
the first credible evidence that animals other than humans and our close
cousins are capable of laughter.
-
- For years, biologists have known that
chimpanzees and even some monkeys produce a panting sound similar to human
laughter, but evidence of mirth among other mammals has been sketchy at
best. Jaak Panksepp and Jeffrey Burgdorf of Bowling Green State University
in Ohio tried to rectify the situation -- by tickling rats, New Scientist
magazine reports in its May 2 issue.
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- Rats respond to tickling by emitting
whistles outside our range of hearing. These chirpings have been detected
before, but most researchers thought they signaled distress or aggression,
or were a prelude to sex.
-
- But the Ohio researchers found that young
rats chirp vigorously during play sessions with each other. They also chirp
more than their elders when they are tickled, which Panksepp says fits
with the idea that children are more ticklish than adults.
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- Panksepp believes the tickling experiments
show that a "primal form of laughter" evolved well before primates
appeared. He suggests that rats and primates, especially the young, use
laughter to distinguish playful from threatening physical interactions,
New Scientist says.
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- "We'd be surprised if rats have
a sense of humor, but they clearly have a sense of fun," he says.
Panksepp expects many scientists to be skeptical about claims for human
emotions in a lower species, but he points out that our laughter is triggered
by brain regions that evolved from ancient times.
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- Robert Provine, who studies laughter
at the University of Maryland, believes many social mammals probably produce
laughter-like sounds. But he says it takes "an intuitive leap"
to interpret the calls as laughter, because they sound very different.
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