THEY may not be noted for their linguistic skills, but it turns out rats can learn the difference between Dutch and Japanese.
Juan Toro’s team at the University of Barcelona in Spain trained rats to press a lever when they heard Japanese, produced by a speech synthesiser. Others were rewarded for responding to Dutch.
The rats trained to recognise Japanese did not respond to Dutch, and vice versa (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied Behaviour Processes, vol 31, p 95). They could not tell the difference if the sentences were read backwards, however, which suggests that the animals distinguish themby rhythmic patterns.
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