Meet the rat
Rats make ultrasonic chirps at 50 kHz when they play or are tickled, the closest thing science has found to rat laughter.
Friends and family
Rats live in groups, sleep in piles and groom each other.
Mothers build careful nests; young rats play-wrestle for hours.
How they talk
Squeaks, ultrasonic chirps and a lot of nose-to-nose sniffing.
How clever are they?
Rats learn mazes, plan routes and can even be trained to sniff out landmines safely.
What they feel
A rat will let a trapped friend out of a cage before eating a chocolate treat.
Superpower: Whisker map
Rats sweep their whiskers 8 times a second to build a 3D map of the dark.
👀 See the world through their eyes
Smell
Trained rats can smell a disease in a sample faster than a lab machine.
Hearing
They hear far above our range, which is where their laughter lives.
🤓 Did you know?
- Rats free trapped cage-mates with no reward for doing it.
- Tickled rats make a 50 kHz chirp scientists call laughter.
- Whether rats feel regret the way we do is still being studied.scientists are still studying this
Living alongside people
Rats are used in millions of experiments each year; they're also loved as companions and work as landmine detectors.