The story is not rats driving cars. This story is not that rats in enriched environments acquire driving skills more quickly.
The story is that learning to drive relaxes rats.
The story is that learning to drive relaxes rats.
From the futurism post https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-rats-drive-tiny-car...
Seems like a terrible control imo for me to say driving intrinsically has a relaxing effect. A better control would be rats doing nothing vs rats driving and seeing if the rats doing nothing were more stressed than the driving rats, meaning the driving rats were actually lowering their baseline stress.
In this experiment the control of being a passenger in a terrifying vehicle moving all by itself with no autonomy or control over the situation can quite likely be the thing causing elevated stress, rather than rats driving depressing levels of stress. Imagine if someone suddenly strapped you into a bubble that started moving by itself and you have no idea why this is happening, no control over the situation, or where you're going or what's going to happen to you. Stressful af. Hell, people get stressed just being in the passenger seat watching someone else drive.
The vast majority of people prefer having autonomy and control over their own motion vs being helplessly navigated by someone else you don't know/trust with zero context and no idea what's going on. A little misleading if this reflects the actual study.
Two dogs in separate rooms with floors that can give them a mild shock. Arranged so they get exactly the same shock. One dog can turn off the shock by performing an action; the other has no control.
This experiment turns the second dog into a shivering nervous wreck... but the first is fine. Same shocks; only difference was control.
What if it's the opposite? What if rats that do nothing are under a higher stress and driving simply allows them to get back to their baseline stress?
Never assume bad science when bad journalism would suffice.
"As hypothesized, the animals living in the enriched environment performed better at the driving test, indicating that they did a better job at learning a new complex skill. The enriched rats also maintained a strong interest in the car, even after the reward of food was removed.
On the other hand, the researchers were surprised at the lack of interest shown by the non-enriched rats and their level of underachievement shown in the driving task. "
Oh, "interest in the car" meant interest in driving? Hard to know without pdf access.
This was a really a fun paper, I'd love to see it reproduced. Perhaps they could compare mice behavior to rat behavior, although given their size it might be more interesting to train a mouse to ride a tiny motorcycle.
https://www.amazon.com/Mouse-Motorcycle-Beverly-Cleary/dp/03...