Unlike many folks, I actually like mice and rats and other rodents. They're smart and learn like the "dickens" (or some such word...). I have never chased or killed one in my home, and I've had several over the years. I can't speak for my cats... Anyway, from Reuters:
Rats can use the rhythm of human language to tell the difference between Dutch and Japanese, researchers in Spain reported Sunday.Their study suggests that animals, especially mammals, evolved some of the skills underlying the use and development of language long before language itself ever evolved, the researchers said.
It is the first time an animal other than a human or monkey has been shown to have this skill.
"These findings have remarkable parallels with data from human adults, human newborns, and cotton-top tamarins," the researchers wrote in their report, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, which is published by the American Psychological Association.
For their study neuroscientists Juan Toro and colleagues at Barcelona's Scientific Park tested 64 adult male rats.
They used Dutch and Japanese because these languages were used in earlier, similar tests, and because they are very different from one another in use of words, rhythm and structure.
The rats were trained to respond to either Dutch or Japanese using food as a reward.
Then they were separated into four groups -- one that heard each language spoken by a native, one that heard synthesized speech, one that heard sentences read in either language by different speakers and a fourth that heard the languages played backwards.
Rats rewarded for responding to Japanese did not respond to Dutch and rats trained to recognize Dutch did not respond the spoken Japanese.
I know this seems bizaare but that's how I feel. The big, bad gun-nut likes animals. No, I'm not ready to buy into the ridiculous extremism of PETA, but I do know that feeling beings are being subject to terrible experiments and they are suffering. I don't like it. So, go ahead and read me the riot act in the comments...
Ain't gonna read you the riot act. Right now I still come down on the side of the use of laboratory rats because they are so insanely useful and have contributed immeasureably to science that directly goes to alleviating suffering of all kinds, but I agree that they are far more intelligent than generally credited with and it does give me serious ethical squirm factor. I feel about the same way about pigs, which are also very intelligent but so close to humans in many respects that they are very valuable laboratory subjects. Nowadays there are some quite strict ethical guidelines in place for the use of laboratory animals (and a board with no sense of humor- there are teeth in the rules), including rules about keeping them mentally stimulated and emotionally unstressed unless absolutely necessary for the experiment, but still.
I kill rodents in and around my home, but I have what I feel is a fairly good reason- bubonic plague and a nasty strain of hantavirus are endemic to my area, so having a soft heart could quite literally hospitalize or kill me.
Posted by: LabRat at January 10, 2005 12:18 AMIt's a tough choice, and I agree with LabRat on the scientific contributions lab animals have provided, but I also am against inflicting an otherwise innocent soul to pain and suffering just for the sake of "mankind".
I hope that there are strict ethical guidelines in place as LabRat noted because I think some experiments, such as introducing different cosmetics and hair products into the eyes of rabbits, are just plain useless. I would think that based on the ingredients alone in some of these products that it would be obvious that contact with the eyes or other sensitive areas "might cause irritation and/or blindness".
So far as I know, these guidelines are in place for scientific researchers in academic and government laboratories- I don't know if corporate R and D divisions are subject, or if they have anything similar.
Posted by: LabRat at January 11, 2005 11:29 PM