Biology and Behavior
The brown rat is nocturnal and is a good swimmer, both on the surface and underwater, but unlike the related black rat (Rattus rattus), they are poor climbers. Brown rats dig well, and often excavate extensive burrow systems. A 2007 study found brown rats to possess metacognition, a mental ability previously only found in humans and some primates, but further analysis suggested they may have been following simple operant conditioning principles.
Read more about this topic: Brown Rat
Famous quotes containing the words biology and, biology and/or behavior:
“The “control of nature” is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and the convenience of man.”
—Rachel Carson (1907–1964)
“Nothing can be more incorrect than the assumption one sometimes meets with, that physics has one method, chemistry another, and biology a third.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“This whole business of Trade gives me to pause and think, as it constitutes false relations between men; inasmuch as I am prone to count myself relieved of any responsibility to behave well and nobly to that person who I pay with money, whereas if I had not that commodity, I should be put on my good behavior in all companies, and man would be a benefactor to man, as being himself his only certificate that he had a right to those aids and services which each asked of the other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)