Love Rat – $4.95

Are you still searching for the perfect Valentine’s Day gift? Look no further! Get the one you love a Love Rat from the NeatoShop. This adorable rat, with printed heart design, is also a squeaky toy. Your sweetheart will be floored by your thoughtfulness.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Valentine’s Day ideas!

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Do rats have empathy? A new study hinted that empathy isn't unique to humans and a few smart mammals, but may actually be a universal trait in the animal kingdom:

“Rats help other rats in distress. That means it’s a biological inheritance,” said neurobiologist Peggy Mason of the University of Chicago. “That’s the biological program we have.”

In a study published Dec. 7 in Science, Mason and University of Chicago psychologists Jean Decety and Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal describe their rat empathy-testing apparatus: An enclosure into which pairs of rats were placed, with one roaming free and the other restrained inside a plastic tube. It could only be opened from the outside, which is exactly what the free rats did — again and again and again, seemingly in response to their trapped companions’ distress.

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A Tokyo art collective known as ChimPom recycles exterminated rats as art objects. These rats have been painted and posed as the Pokémon character Pickachu. Is this weird or what? See more pictures at Smart Stop. Link -Thanks, Dan!

Thanks to modern medical science, we now can see the process of a Burmese Python ingesting a rat in all its gory details:

Using a combination of computer tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), scientists Kasper Hansen and Henrik Lauridsen of Aarhus University in Denmark were able to visualize the entire internal organ structures and vascular systems (aka "guts") of a Burmese Python digesting a rat.

By choosing the right settings for contrast and light intensity during the scanning process, the scientists were able to highlight specific organs and make them appear in different colors. The non-invasive CT and MRI scans could let scientists look at animal anatomy without the need for other invasive methods such as dissections.

Link – via Rue The Day!

Who can negotiate a maze faster, a human or a rat? Another round of lunacy from Tom Scott. -via b3ta

The team discovered that mechanically stroking just one whisker for four minutes within the first two hours of the blockage caused the blood to quickly flow to other arteries – like cars exiting a gridlocked freeway to find detours.

But unlike freeway off-ramps, which can quickly clog, the alternate arteries expanded beyond their normal size, opening wide to allow critical blood flow to the brain. The technique was 100 percent effective in preventing strokes in rats with arterial obstruction.

This leads to an intriguing possibility that we can do the same in humans, despite of our lack of whiskers:

So should we be tickling our own whiskers? And what about women, who are less likely to have facial hair? While it’s too soon to tell if the findings will translate to humans, researchers say it’s possible, and stubble is not required. We have sensitive body parts wired to the same area of the brain as rodents’ fine-tuned whiskers.

In people, “stimulating the fingers, lips or face in general could all have a similar effect,” says UCI doctoral student Melissa Davis, co-author of the study, which appears in the June issue of PLoS One.

Link – via metafilter

Gothamist reader “Wayne” took this photo of a rat apparently stuck trying to emerge from a crack in the pavement.  Other readers went to work with Photoshopped explanations and fun interpretations almost immediately.

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The habitat in the area is currently regarded as pristine, but less than 20 miles to the south of Mount Bosavi extensive logging operations are happening.

The mountain acts like an island in the vast sea of jungle, trapping different species on it.

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(image credit: BBC)

Talk about snatching victory from the jaws of danger! Student photographer Casey Gutteridge snapped this priceless photo of a daring rat literally stealing food from right under the nose of a leopard:

The little rat – thought to be only two to three months old – was spotted scampering into the leopard’s enclosure shortly after feeding time at the Santago Rare Leopard Project, in Hertfordshire.

So intent was the plucky rodent on its mission to snatch a tasty snack, that it seemed not to notice that its path was taking it within a whisker’s breadth of 12-year-old Sheena.

Clutching a corner of raw meat with its tiny paws, the rat busily tucked in, until it sensed one of those whiskers moving in.

Sheena, bemused by the interloper coming between her and the remains of dinner, padded over on paws big enough to wreak vengeance with a single swipe.

But rather than giving the thief at very least the hearty set down it deserved, she gingerly lowered her nose for an exploratory sniff.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Oomi.

‘Actually,’ says Jessica, ‘it’s easier to get her in the right position than you’d think. I just wait until it’s late at night and she’s really sleepy so can’t be bothered to scurry away. Then I just follow her round with my camera until I get a good shot.’

Link to story. Link to Bug’s Flickr set. -via Unique Daily

(image credit: Jessica Florence)

Mark Hammond and colleagues at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom have found a way to control a robot with rat neurons. Watch this short video by Newscientist to see the robot in action.

From the article:

This is no ordinary robot control system – a plain old microchip
connected to a circuit board. Instead, the controller nestles inside a
small pot containing a pink broth of nutrients and antibiotics. Inside
that pot, some 300,000 rat neurons have made – and continue to make -
connections with each other.

As
they do so, the disembodied neurons are communicating, sending
electrical signals to one another just as they do in a living creature.
We know this because the network of neurons is connected at the base of
the pot to 80 electrodes, and the voltages sparked by the neurons are
displayed on a computer screen.

It’s
these spontaneous electrical patterns that researchers at the
University of Reading in the UK want to harness to control a robot. If
they can do so reliably, by stimulating the neurons with signals from
sensors on the robot and using the neurons’ response to get the robots
to respond, they hope to gain insights into how brains function. Such
insights might help in the treatment of conditions like Alzheimer’s,
Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy.

– via newscientist

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by su.wei.

He told local Chinese newspapers that he thought the rat might be a valuable specimen, or a rare species, and had to muster up his courage before grabbing its tail and picking it up by the scruff of its neck.

“I did it, I caught a rat the size of a cat!” he shouted out afterwards, according to the reports. Mr Xian is believed to still be in possession of the animal, after stuffing into a bag and departing the scene.

The rat had a 12-inch tail and teeth and inch long! Forestry officials who saw pictures think it’s a Chinese bamboo rat, which rarely grow over ten inches long, but cannot be sure until they examine the rat itself. Link -via Arbroath

(image credit: News 163)

Here’s a great picture of a three-layer love fest. I almost wish there was a tiny flea on the rat just to make things even better. Best. Picture. Ever. I especially love that it wasn’t staged, the photographer just happened across this freak occurrence.

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