Question: what food choices do the rats make when happy? do the rats have names? do you have a favourite rat?

Amy Warnock answered on 13 Jun 2018:

Hi Evelyn, I haven’t found much so far in terms of how rats change their food choices after being tickled – at the moment we’ve been giving the rats a choice between a sugar solution and water after being tickled and they seem to show less of a preference for the sugar solution after being tickled so it might be that rats make slightly ‘healthier’ food choices when they’re happy but I still need to do a lot more research to confirm this! I don’t give the rats any names as we just have different numbers for them so that I can tell them apart. Usually when I’m doing an experiment I do have a favourite rat as they all have little personalities but I try not to get too attached!