Science: Shockproof Rats

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Rats mislike loud noises, as many a laboratory worker knows. And a shrill noise may throw them into something like an epileptic fit. This elementary experiment has long served as an introduction to the study of fear. Last week, however, some very contradictory rat findings were reported in Science by a Johns Hopkins psychologist, William J. Griffiths Jr.

Griffiths noticed that the noise experiment has always been performed on sheltered laboratory rats. For his own tests, he hunted down more than 100 wild rats in Baltimore alleys and warehouses, caged them and gave them the standard dose of shrill whistles and air blasts. Contrary to expectations, the wild rats got mad and tried to bite the whistles.

Griffiths does not know the reason for the difference between wild and tame rats, but he is inclined to think that vitamin and mineral deficiencies in the diet of laboratory rats may have something to do with it. He has also found some evidence that wild rats, like other city dwellers, develop relative immunity to noise.