Friday, January 19, 2007

The Most Important And Interesting Thing I Learned All Week


Rats laugh.

According to Wikipedia, rats "emit short, high frequency, ultrasonic, socially induced vocalization during rough and tumble play, and when tickled."

Unfortunately humans can't hear the laughing without special equipment.

It's also been found they may have a sense of humor.

As part of their scientific paper, beguilingly titled Laughing Rats And The Evolutionary Antecedents Of Human Joy?, Jaak Penkepp and Jeff Burgdorf measured rats' responses to a hilarious series of anecdotes, jokes and limericks.

Concluding:
"We guess you just had to be there."
Just don't get me started on why I googled "rat" in the first place.

4 comments:

Rubstar said...

You googled it because its the year of the rat? (I think). Or your place has been recently infested by rats?

Firefly1234 said...

I'll bite - why did you google rat? Me, I was looking for rat images to make an email to send to everyone to let them know it's the year of the rat... And yeah, I love rats. They totally are the best little companions anyone could ever have.
Ratatouille anyone??
Okay, I know I'm weird. But thanks for the link too!

Anonymous said...

Okay, I googled "Rat" in the images section to contrast for my 4-year-old Rat vs. Mouse....

Anonymous said...

I came here from googling rats to compare agaisnt mice and my own pet rats.