Dr. Kelly Lambert

For most of psychology, it's just they were the only show in town. If you wanted to do research with an animal model, when I was in graduate school at the University of Georgia, this is what we had. That was the only animal model you had.

So the idea was to train them. You get in the car, you get a Froot Loop. Sit here and get a Froot Loop. But early on, it was amazing that they seemed to learn the concept of driving. So once we shaped them and they learned to press the right lever to go right, they seemed to automatically know to press the left one to go left.

I don't think they made a decision about which model organism should we use. The rat was already on board for biomedical research, so it was practical to use the rat.

They bred brothers and sisters for 20 generations. Their intention was the animals to be as close to clones as possible. And then whatever your manipulation was, diet, stress, movement, or whatever, they felt confident that if they saw a difference between the experimental group that got it and the control group that didn't, that that variable was the influential variable.

We started comparing that behavior to humans at a slot machine or something. People, I think, started seeing humans as big rats or rats as little humans. I always say that we're not. We've got, what, 6,000 mammalian species, and we're going to pick one or two?

And it's hard for me to think back about, why didn't I question that? Or did I ask if there were other models? And it's just come lately that I've had so many of these, Kelly, what the heck were you thinking all these years?

I love designing tests for rats.

They're generally, you know, like kittens. A wild rat, I have to suit up, it would bite my nose off. So they've been bred to be able to handle them easily. So if I'm looking at aggression or stress, this may not be the best model to use.

You're more interested in the novel than the food?

I wonder what it is about that.

Podcast rat. This is your first rat podcaster.