Rats can be taught to play hide and seek with humans and can do it really well. This offers a new way to study the neurobiology of playful behavior in animals.
The unconventional experiment,in Friday’s edition of the journal Science, sheds light on the sophisticated sense of play in these tiny rodents and the complex mechanisms at work in their brains. It also hints at the evolutionary usefulness of this type of play., a neuroscientist at Northwestern University who was not involved in the study.
Researchers have documented simple types of play in all kinds of mammals. That includes laboratory rats, which have even been found to emit ultrasonic “giggles” when they’re tickled.But Brecht said he and his colleagues wondered about accounts from pet owners who said their beloved rats could engage in a more complex game: hide and seek.
If the rat was the “seeker,” the scientist would hide and then remotely open the box. If the rat was the “hider,” the scientist would crouch by the box when the rat came out, prompting the little rodent to scurry for cover. All six rats learned how to be the seeker; five of them were able to handle hiding as well.
The rats turned out to be remarkably sophisticated players. If the scientists let them peek, the rats used visual cues to find them faster. The animals also checked hiding spots that their opponent used repeatedly. When the human was found, the rats made ultrasonic calls — which the scientists measured but couldn’t hear — thatThe rats’ strategies completely changed when they were in the role of hider.
The fact that the rats so quickly picked up the rules, and could play with such sophistication, hints that hide and seek might not be such a foreign concept to these animals, Brecht said. Indeed, he said the behavior is probably widespread in the animal kingdom, though exactly how many species might engage in it remains unsettled.“Our whole thinking is that hide and seek might actually be a very old game,” Brecht said, “maybe more [like] 100 million years old than a few thousand years old.
“They’re grooving on the game, and that’s pretty amazing,” Mason said. “To me, the behavioral results drive our thinking forward a lot.”
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