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Role play between rats and humans
There is controversy over the extent of animal game behavior and its evolutionary function. Reinhold et al. demonstrated that rats can play hide and seek with a human. In the "search" condition, rats learned to search for hidden humans and kept searching until they found them. In the state of "concealment", they learned to hide in several places and waited for them to be found. In both cases, the rats were rewarded by social interaction with the human. The rats vocalized when they searched and found and were silent to hide themselves. The recordings in the internal prefrontal cortex detected neurons sensitive to the structure of the game.
Science, this number p. 1180
Abstract
The evolutionary, cognitive and neural foundations of mammalian play are not yet fully understood. We played hide and seek, an elaborate RPG with rats. We did not offer food rewards, but we engaged in playful interactions after being found or found. The rats quickly learned the game and learned to alternate the roles of concealment and search. They guided the search through vision and memories of past hiding places and uttered specific vocalizations to an event of the game. When they hide, rats rarely vocalize and prefer opaque enclosures with transparent hiding places. preference not observed during the search. Neuronal recordings revealed intense activity of the prefrontal cortex that varies with game events and types of trials ("hide" or "search") and could lead to role plays. The elaborate cognitive abilities of hide and seek in rats suggest that this game could be evolutionary.
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