Never Insult Rats again - They are better than Humans

Have you watched the movie Ratatouille? You just can discount the animation movie to be a fiction anymore.In this world filled with voilence, hate, prejudice and lack of compassion, we have a lesson to be learnt from Rats. Ramayana talks about how squirells and monkey helped Lord Rama to lay the bridge to Lanka. For some this could be a myth, but when you read this article below you can extrapolate the same logic.

Scientist have discovered from experiments that the rats had developed what they call generalized reciprocity — that is, they were generous even with an unknown partner because another rat had just been kind to them.

Here is the extract from NY TIMES - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/science/10rat.html

Swiss researchers put pairs of female rats — they were littermates — in a cage, separating them with a wire mesh. In one half of the cage, a rat could pull a lever attached to a baited tray that would deliver food to her sister, but not to herself. Each rat was trained in alternate sessions, first as a recipient of food, then as a provider. The sisters learned to cooperate, and they pulled significantly more often when their littermate was present than when the other half of the cage was empty.

Then the researchers put rats who had recently been assisted by their partners, and rats who had not recently been helped, in with unfamiliar and unrelated rats. Those who had recently been helped were about 21 percent more likely to pull the lever for the new partner.
This was not just ordinary operant conditioning or reinforcement, the researchers maintain, because the rats were never rewarded for their own behavior, only that of others. Because the rats were unfamiliar and unrelated, there was no family interaction involved. The only plausible explanation, they believe, is that the rats had developed what they call generalized reciprocity — that is, they were generous even with an unknown partner because another rat had just been kind to them.

The study’s lead author, Claudia Rutte, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland, warned against drawing conclusions about humans from work with rats. "We’re interested in the evolution of cooperation," she said, "but our research is about animals, really, not people."

Still, the paper, published in the July issue of PLoS Biology, cites previous research showing that humans act the same way — people who have been helped in some way are more likely to help others immediately afterward.

Incidentally, these rats were not the usual cute, pink-eyed white lab rats. They were bred from wild Rattus norvegicus — the brown or gray Norway rat depressingly familiar to residents of many American cities.

Is it time to stop using the word "rat" as an insult? Maybe. Apparently even a nasty-looking rat can be possessed of sterling character.