Takako 🐀Here’s to #WorldRatDay❣️🌎
One of my fav photos of Tillie —she’s looking up at the awesome rat illustration by Drusilla Kehl that hangs on the door. I love this because it says “the world is in the little hands of rats.”
Some years later, Lil Marty looked up at #TillieAndTessie in space atop the RatManor.
The illustration by Drusilla Kehl, aka RatArtiste.
aaand the next moment, Marty completely surprised me! He’s a mighty McBean!!
(then Marty managed to fall back on the RatManor roof, thank goodness!)
Eve, Go Listen to Dead Channel Sky@otterX I wonder how the rats perceive and consider the rat art. Do they like it?
@EveOfTheFuture hmm… rats are certainly smart enough to “understand” art, I bet. 🤔
What do you think, @elduvelle? Do you know anything?
What do you think, @elduvelle? Do you know anything?
El Duvelle@otterX @EveOfTheFuture
Hmm.. I can't think of any study that specifically addressed this, and it also makes me wonder how can we quantify "art appreciation" even in humans.
What comes to mind is that lots of studies show that rats can detect and seek novelty, for example if they are used to an environment and then a new object is added to the environment they'll go and explore it, and their brain will produce more dopamine which is also linked to enjoyable things, like eating food. So, if we consider that appreciating new things is a little similar to appreciating certain forms of art, then in that way, rats might appreciate art!
On the other hand, rats are not very visual so I doubt they would be sensitive to any kind of visual art; given their olfactory skills I would suspect that they might appreciate "olfactory art" much more... Like a nice poop from their friend ;)
I'm sure other scientists closer to this theme would know a lot more about forms of art appreciation in non-human animals!
@elduvelle Thank you. Some rats sure like new stuff to sniff! lol *Art of poop*
Speaking of olfactory, while I was visiting my folks in Yokohama this February, I saw this girl on tv, who could smell different colors of origami papers, different sources of spring water, and so on. My olfactory is pretty sensitive, but that was incredible. She described it that she can sense the density of odor.
@otterX yes she must have very well-developped olfactory cells! At first I thought what you were describing sounds like synaesthesia but it actually seems that she is "just" very good at smelling things... Impressive!