It is true. Gallery Educator (and the rat’s “coach”) Leanna Pletcher teaches rats to play basketball at the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond. “It is an educational demonstration of their intelligence,” Pletcher says.
The program began in January of 2004 and was based on models that were already being used at other museums. The Science Museum
started with three Fancy rats purchased from a local pet store, and slowly discovered how to train them to play basketball using B.F. Skinner’s Theory of Operant Conditioning. This training method is something that you’re likely to already have a good working knowledge of even if you didn’t know it had a name. In a nutshell it is
associating positive reinforcement to a particular task using a reward.
This kind of training is a bit more complex than it sounds. It is no secret that behavior is affected by its consequences. We reward and punish people, for example, so that they will behave in specific ways. For example, a well-known experiment involved a cat enclosed in a box. The cat struggled to escape and eventually moved the latch which opened the door. When repeatedly enclosed in a box, the cat gradually stopped doing the things that were ineffective ("errors") and eventually chose the successful (“correct”) response very quickly.
In operant conditioning, behavior is also affected by its consequences, but the process is not trial-and-error learning. It can best be explained with an example: A hungry rat is placed in a semi-soundproof box. For several days bits of food are occasionally delivered into a tray by an automatic dispenser. The rat soon goes to the tray immediately upon hearing the sound of the dispenser. A small horizontal section of a lever protruding from the wall has been resting in its lowest position, but it is now raised slightly so that when the rat touches it, it moves downward. In doing so it closes an electric circuit and operates the food dispenser. Immediately after eating the delivered food the rat begins to press the lever fairly rapidly. The behavior has been strengthened or reinforced by a single consequence. The rat was not "trying" to do anything when it first touched the lever and it did not learn from "errors."; a bit more complicated, but very effective. Pletcher’s basketball rats learned to play in a similar manner. During training they must learn thirteen different steps and training can take anywhere from four to six months (about an hour per day) to complete.
The Game
The rats, all named after female athletes or characters in books, play a one-on-one game of hoops using a ball that can best be described as a rat-size whiffle ball (the holes give them something to grasp). They play on an enclosed court that is 17 in. x 30 in. Each rat is conditioned to go to its specific side of the court during the training process. The game ends once one of the rats has scored 50 baskets, about ten minutes. The rats don’t toss the ball through the hoop; they actually jump through it while holding the ball, essentially doing a “body dunk.”
The basketball game-thing is interesting and entertaining, but there are a lot of things that can be learned in addition to how to teach a rat to play basketball. Believe it or not, rats and humans have over 200,000 genes in common, so it follows that much of what is learned while working with these rats applies to us.
All of the rats used at the museum in Virginia are female. Pletcher has discovered that the females cooperate better than males, which can become aggressive with one another. ‘Sounds like children on the playground, doesn’t it? Pletcher has also come to find that the rats are actually playing defense. Remember, these rats were only conditioned to get the ball through the hoop on their side of the court. Over time however, as the games went on, their “coach” noticed that the rats were actually defending their basket and attempting to block the other from making it to the other side of the court. They are naturally competitive just as we are.
If your travels take you to Richmond you might want to take in a game.
Rats shoot hoops at the Science Museum of Virginia
