Argument: Rat Intelligence

Argument- Page 28

In Tod Cooper and John Zubek’s experiment on rat intelligence, they devised an experiment where they separated rats into groups by their natural talent for solving mazes. They then presented these two groups of rats with different environmental conditions that were expected to have varying effects on the rat’s performance in the maze. What they discovered was that “maze bright” and “maze dull” rats under “restrictive” conditions had the same low level of performance and the two groups had almost equal levels of performance, with maze dull exhibiting slighter poorer results, under “enhanced” environmental conditions. Considering what we learned in class about epigenetics, how plausible would it be for the “enhanced” maze bright dull rats to produce rats classified as maze bright after reproduction and for the “restricted” maze bright rats to end up producing maze dull offspring? Incorporate knowledge learned in-class and outside knowledge about Genetics and Epigenetics in your response. 

Bowen Jin
bowenjin2004@yahoo.com