Anyone who has been through the parenting experience to know that young children learn to play hide-and-seek quite easily. Capture soon what to do if they happen to hide or if, in contrast, are "the league". It is also customary to reveal with laughter or whispers -or directly with a "I'm here"- the corner where they are hidden, perhaps because the most fun part at that age is to be trapped. The fact is that this entertainment they love, so it is not strange that we find in virtually all cultures of the world. Now, a team of researchers from the Humboldt University in Berlin has discovered that the rats also can learn to play hide and seek with the human . And they do it surprisingly well.
The experiment, a delight-don't miss the video on these lines - sheds light on the ludic behaviour in animals. Until now, says Annika Reinhold, head of the study published in the journal "Science", the traditional methods of neuroscience, which often depend on a strict control and conditioning, were not permitted to know what goes on in the brain of the animal that plays, an activity that is exercised in freedom and that seeks no more benefit than having a good time.
Tickle, as a prize,Reinhold and his team taught rats male adolescents to play a simplified version of rat versus human , hiding in a room of about 30 square metres. After a few weeks, the guinea pigs not only they were able to play, but also learned how to toggle between hide-and-seek your opponent is human. In addition, according to the researchers, they ended up playing each function in a level of "highly competent".
according To the study, when they played searching, the rodents learned to do it until you find the hidden human. If they played hide them, remained in place until being discovered by the human player. Instead of with food, the authors awarded the behaviors of successful concealment, and search with social interactions that are fun, such as tickling, fondling or horseplay (pushing or falling). Situations which remind a lot to the game with little humans.
A very old gameThe results show that the animals became players more strategic with the time , using systematic searches, visual cues and to investigate the hiding places of the past of their human counterparts. When they hid themselves, remained in silence -do something really complicated with the young children!- and moved to a new location, preferring to hide in cardboard boxes opaque instead of transparent boxes.
studies neural revealed a intense activity of the prefrontal cortex of the brain of rats that varied according to the moments of the game and the role that they play to perform (hide or seek). For the authors, the developed cognitive abilities of rats to play hide-and-seek suggest that this game could be very old in the history of evolution.
Date Of Update: 14 September 2019, 01:00
