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Artist trained rats to take selfies to make a point about social media

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Re: Artist trained rats to take selfies to make a point about social media

#5

Post by hnbad »

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #2

When I was.a kid, I "learned" from some authority (TV? book?) that cats and dogs could not recognize process two dimensional images, and that a TV was therefore just visual noise to them.

Same here and while that's demonstrably not true (the explanation I heard was something about the colors and refresh rate so maybe this was true at some point in the past) the article does state the rats don't recognize themselves - that's different from recognizing the picture or being able to see it.

That said, it's really more of an art project than anything to do with science as the article makes it clear the rats were trained to push buttons to get sugar, the selfies were just artistic flourish to make a (fairly overt) point.

Re: Artist trained rats to take selfies to make a point about social media

#7

Post by throw__away7391 »

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #2

When I was.a kid, I "learned" from some authority (TV? book?) that cats and dogs could not recognize process two dimensional images, and that a TV was therefore just visual noise to them.

Same here. Obviously this is not true.

A ton of "science" taught to kids through seemingly legitimate channels is in fact just the off the cuff intuitions of some thoroughly average adult, and adults on average tend to be staggeringly uninformed on most topics.

EDIT: And even more so for history.

Re: Artist trained rats to take selfies to make a point about social media

#8

Post by TechRemarker »

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #2

When I was.a kid, I "learned" from some authority (TV? book?) that cats and dogs could not recognize process two dimensional images, and that a TV was therefore just visual noise to them.

Assuming you looked up the current info on that, according to a quick Google current research all seems to show they can recognize familiar faces in photos.

Re: Artist trained rats to take selfies to make a point about social media

#9

Post by frangolino »

hnbad wrote: post #5
Jeff_Brown wrote: post #2

When I was.a kid, I "learned" from some authority (TV? book?) that cats and dogs could not recognize process two dimensional images, and that a TV was therefore just visual noise to them.

Same here and while that's demonstrably not true (the explanation I heard was something about the colors and refresh rate so maybe this was true at some point in the past) the article does state the rats don't recognize themselves - that's different from recognizing the picture or being able to see it. That said, it's really more of an art project than anything to do with science as the article makes it clear the rat…

> That said, it's really more of an art project than anything to do with science as the article makes it clear the rats were trained to push buttons to get sugar, the selfies were just artistic flourish to make a (fairly overt) point.

according to the article, this was just to get them hooked at first, but they kept doing it later:

> After the rats were trained to push the level for sugar, Lignier changed the experiment's parameters. Sometimes taking a picture would yield a piece of sugar, and sometimes would not.

> Nevertheless, the rats kept on jamming the button, taking dozens of selfies. After awhile, he says they largely stopped bothering to eat the sugar, even when it came out.

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