If the rats are able to communicate with each other then I think you might find the consensus would not necessarily be in your favour.
What happens if you get allocated five 'teenage' rats who just love pushing your Tesla to its limits! I mean it's scary enough when it's just me and the Autopilot on the autobahn at 240 km/h.
Furthermore, the rats that lived in enriched environments drove for the joy of driving, whereas the standard caged rats only drove for the food rewards.
"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. "
"Just like us humans, learning to drive and navigate seemed to have a relaxing effect on the rats. In a control experiment, they found rats had higher levels of cortisol when being driven around in remote-controlled cars than when they were allowed to steer themselves."
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.
>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.
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?
That’s a different thing, the actual control was as you describe (measuring stress markers over time).
The thing mentioned appear to be an attempt to confirm some previous study's finding about self-sufficiency, which is pretty much related to what you say about autonomy and control.
Never assume bad science when bad journalism would suffice.
I took my first driving lesson on an automatic today, and it was kind of a surreal out of body experience. I felt like I was playing a video game. Maybe because I could control something that was moving the world around me?
Until they put the rats in rush hour traffic, then see how relaxed they are :-)
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.
Reminds me of the chapter of Blink where Gladwell delves into the correlation between a doctor's bedside manner / tone of voice and the likelihood of them being sued for malpractice. The whole thesis of the chapter seems to be that people are more willing to sue docs who are less nice, and then at the end he says if you don't like your doc, your intuition is probably right!
Not really surprising.
From what I have seen of rats, they are very good at spatial perception and physical manipulation of their environment, where they easily outperform most cats and dogs I have had the pleasure of knowing.
A smart rat clearly enjoys exploration and challenge, and likes to be in control - it would appear more unexpected if these joyrides didn't relax them.
I remember a short-story where a cat learns to pilot a customized glider. It has always made me wonder about the plausibility of it. Were I not allergic to cat, I would probably have built a customized controller for a roomba and see if they are interested in learning to drive it.
I really wonder how far animals can in tool usage if we were to build custom-designed ones for them.
I have a driving licence, but I don't drive and haven't for years. It's way too stressful, being responsible for a high-speed machine and all the lifes of people passing by, not even speaking about my own or passenger's. I can relax in a train, but definitely not in a car ;p
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[ 6.0 ms ] story [ 177 ms ] threadBackseat drivers.....
posted to earlier submission https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21340128
https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-rats-drive-tiny-car...
Perhaps some of these rats could even be replaced with sensors and Machine Learning. Just imagine the possibilities
What happens if you get allocated five 'teenage' rats who just love pushing your Tesla to its limits! I mean it's scary enough when it's just me and the Autopilot on the autobahn at 240 km/h.
Summary: Uber couldn't pay more, even if they wanted to.
The story is that learning to drive relaxes rats.
"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.
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.
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...
https://www.iflscience.com/brain/teaching-rats-to-drive-tiny...
sigh.
I'll take the AMP link this time around!
I'll take the AMP-free web thank you very much.
It is all about rats and made me much more appreciative of them. Now when I see one I think about what it’s doing and why.
The book also has some interesting stuff about US history.
I really wonder how far animals can in tool usage if we were to build custom-designed ones for them.
https://www.livescience.com/25299-dogs-learn-drive.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chrzpnL1OEM
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21340583
Yes, but the rats might be thoroughly stressed out