Rat Behavior

Rat behavior is meant here the hole of the activities of animal effectors organs, its muscles and glands. The definition includes the contraction of smooth muscle and the secretions of all glands, but most of this book is concerned with behavior in a narrower sense, namely, the movements of the whole animal which depend on the activity of many skeletal muscles.

The account of behavior in this book is wholly in terms of overt activities which can be directly observed, and of physiology which can be studied by well-established laboratory methods. No reference is made to the feelings of rats, their thoughts, their minds, or any of a number of such concepts colloquially used in speaking of human behavior. This restriction is usual (though not universal) in scientific communication, and we may now inquire whether it is necessary. Most people seeing a rat sniffing around near food find it both convenient and sensible to say that the rat is hungry and looking for food; and, is the animal is then disturbed and runs away, to say that it has been frightened.

Most of mammals, rats are greatly influenced by odors. A male can distinguished the odor of a female in estrus from that of a non-receptive female. An unwary human observer, incapable of this olfactory achievement, might attribute the movement of a male toward a female out of sight or hearing to some mysterious and identifiable agency, perhaps called an ‘instinct’, beyond ordinary understanding. Rats also make and hear sounds of too high pitch for our ears. These are example of the different species; the ‘world’ of sense impressions of an animal much influenced by smell, and responsive to sounds of high pitch, is quite different from that of one relying primarily on vision.

Another example is the attribution of a high degree of intelligence of rats. Wild rats are difficult to kill because they avoid traps and poison baits. They consequently often appear intelligent, and one biologist has been led to call the conflict between rats and men ‘a veritable battle of wits’; but careful observation of rats in simple experiment situations has shown that the avoidance of strange things is quite indiscriminate.