Who knew that one could train a rat to play basketball?!!! Well, there is a rat basketball team at Utah State University (yes, that's the 'rodent' kind of rat...I promise I'm not making fun of our true Aggie team). Rat training is a part of the psychology department, which I'm told helps the students to learn about Behaviorism. My learning theory class gets to go to the rat lab on Tuesday to watch a game. I'm pretty excited.
So, do you think if I brought popcorn and a cow bell to the game, it would distract the players???
(Maybe they should teach the rats to play football...I wonder who would win if they played the USU football team. OUCH!)
6 comments:
The sad part is that after they train the rats they kill them since their behavior is already modified.
They don't even let the students who train them use them as pets afterwards. How cool would that be to say, "Hey, check out my pet rat that shoots hoops."
What a terrible thing to tell me before going to see them play!!!
I am going to assume that you are wrong so that my experience is not totally ruined.
I think the rats would win, because who would want to step on a rat. Gross.
I wonder if part of the training would be dealing with outside distractions--like the noise in the spectrum. I tell you that we have a bad reputation down in Provo as the worst fans ever--particularly in hockey and basketball. It makes me kind of proud and choked up inside. :)
Well, sometimes life is full of disappointments. There was confusion on where our class was supposed to go for the rat lab, and so we arrived late. Soooo, unfortunately we didn't get to see a basketball game. Instead we got to see one white rat pressing a lever to get a drop of water to drink because he had been deprived for 24 hours. Let me just say...WHAT A LET DOWN!
Where have you gone. Are you dead?
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