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Rats learned to drive

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Re: Rats learned to drive

#81
post #41

Just now scientists are finding out driving is fun, when we're just about ready to ban it! Mind you, I don't think the rats would enjoy it as much if they had to share the road with the kind of rats I share it with, and if the penalty for crashing (or being crashed into) was as high.

Driving is fun until you factor in traffic, reckless drivers, and the stakes of accidents

Still beats losing train connections, being pressed in a sardine can until everyone fits in, or stop in the middle of nowhere wondering when it will start moving again.

But you can combine best of both world experiences, being compressed in a bus, stuck in a middle of stop and go traffic.

Re: Rats learned to drive

#82
post #75

The funniest thing to me is that rats are much quicker on their feet than they are in the toy car.

That's beside the point. Walking/running requires energy and is exhausting. The car provides its own energy, so driving is easy and relaxing. I know which one I'd prefer!

Re: Rats learned to drive

#84
post #80
post #8

This reminded me of the orangutan driving a golf cart: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DJsn1QivbKM He has mastered it. He clearly understands the concept of roads vs sidewalks. He can drive using one hand. And most importantly, he obviously has a great time doing that.

I don't understand. Someone, at some point, said lets see if the Orangutan can drive the golf cart, and presumably no one said "NO! That's an awful idea"... Then not only did it learn, it got good at it and seems to enjoy it... I just really don't understand how this came about. How did it learn to do this. The initial phases must have been just constant crashing into stuff. How on earth did it ever get past this wit…

> The initial phases must have been just constant crashing into stuff.

Why would you assume that?

It didn't learn by trial and error, it watched and copied another ape.

Golf carts aren't massively complicated.

Re: Rats learned to drive

#85

Full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08G8u7sk2Jo A different one, in a home environment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYHMc3-f3v8

The home one .. nice people but there's something so lost about dedicating your life and house to your pet rats. Everyone seems to living a fake life in that.

As opposed to grinding at work in order to improve ad performance by 0.1%?

Re: Rats learned to drive

#87
post #8

This reminded me of the orangutan driving a golf cart: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DJsn1QivbKM He has mastered it. He clearly understands the concept of roads vs sidewalks. He can drive using one hand. And most importantly, he obviously has a great time doing that.

Better than FSD

Re: Rats learned to drive

#88
post #52
post #41

Just now scientists are finding out driving is fun, when we're just about ready to ban it! Mind you, I don't think the rats would enjoy it as much if they had to share the road with the kind of rats I share it with, and if the penalty for crashing (or being crashed into) was as high.

Pfffft, nobody is banning driving. Self driving cars are not going to be rolled out that widely for a while. Also, moving away from car centric infrastructure doesn't mean that cars are getting banned. That's such a weird US centric take I see way too often. Here in the Netherlands, we arguably have some of the most bike and pedestrian friendly infrastructure in the world. Guess what, we also have a very well respect…

Yeah sorry that was a joke, if not clear

Re: Rats learned to drive

#89

Fish can drive cars too. https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/goldfish-driving-1.6309485 >>> Surprisingly, it doesn't take the fish a long time to learn how to drive the vehicle. They're confused at first. They don't know what's going on. But they're very quick to realize that there is a correlation between their movement and the movement of the machine that they're in.

Of course this fits right in with the thread's theme of animals driving, and I don't want to be a spoilsport, but this article has me not too convinced about the bold claim it makes.

As good as it sounds, I have my reservations about it showing "that a fish has the cognitive capability to navigate outside its natural environment".

Rather it seems to me the fish is just swimming in the direction of the treat, as it would do _inside_ its natural environment, and the car translates that directional push - I don't see a real "driving" coordination in the sense of a motoric abstraction based on a learning of cause and effect.

I doubt the fish are in any way "aware" of what's happening, or even that it's happening distinctly outside their environment. They're just swimming instinctively, adopting to what I imagine might a feel like a strong breaking current and a boop on the nose. Some might be more adept at this than others. After all they're captive animals that probably don't have much experience navigating challenging environments, not even aquatic ones.

I highly suspect "driving" via levers or buttons like the rats do would be beyond of what can be reasonably expected from a goldfish brain anyway.

As a kind of mental cross-check of the claim, I'd expect, say, a moth to be able to "drive" just the same way towards a light - and it would be pretty obvious there's no deeper cognition involved.

Re: Rats learned to drive

#90
> Unexpectedly, we found that the rats had an intense motivation for their driving training, often jumping into the car and revving the "lever engine" before their vehicle hit the road. Why was that?

That is absolutely adorable and wonderful!

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