RATS' SIXTH SENSE.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LIII, Issue LIII, 13 April 1908, Page 2

RATS' SIXTH SENSE.

A VIVISECTOR'S REMARKABLE EXPERIMENTS.

Marvellous recant experiments and discoveries in th© animal kingdom reveal wanderM powers and possibilities. Animals tire far above 110 in some lines of progress as we are superior in others. They have souses unknown to us but, as the ancestors of animals are also our ancestors, if we go back far enough } it is quite possible to develop in human beings any sens-a or power found in the animals. i!or instance, by rather cruel methods it was proved that rats have a sixth sense, and this extra sonne is as sure and accurate as any of the others. A oertafm professor had long suspected rats had some mysterious advantage in their operations underground in darkness, wet, <uid cold. To discover, if possible, what this faculty might be, he constructed a labyrinth with a trap door on the outside and food in the centre. Into this labyrinth he dropped a hiingry rat, which scurried about in and out of the chambers and passages, until he at lost reached the food. Returned through tho trap, the animal found his way back again without hesitation. The rat was now bljinded a.nd the experiment x'epcated. Without his eyesight, the rodent lost no time in talcing the shortest road to the food once more. This was not surprising, as his senses of smell had probably been his chief guide. To remove his sense of 6mell was the ' next step. By severing a few aierves the creature's nose was made useless as a sense organ. As soon as it had recovered from the operation it was placed in the labyrinth again. The animal's trip to the food was nearly 20 per cent longer this time, but it was 60 short that tho professor was sars that the guiding i>Ci«se wa3 »ot crippled. There remained the senses of hearing, tcste, and feeling. There was no need of removing the sense o* taste, a.s this could not possibly have aided in finding •th' 3 pr.th. Nor would its ears help the rat, for there was no noise to act as guide. feeling might quite possibly be the faculty upon which the animal depended, so this was removed- The first step was to en* of the stiff, but highly sensitive, bristly hair which protrudes 'from the muzzle, and is commonly called "whiskers." The whiskers of animals aro guides in the dark. The feet of 0, rodent are also highly sensitive to touch, and might on a pinch act as a guide by revealing the feeling of the labyrinth's floor. Ac1 cordingly the feet were frozen to remove i all sensation from them. The rat was thus stripped? of every known sense that might be of the slight-

est> assistance in extricating him. from the labyrinth. The top of the affair -was made of glass, and now for t 1 c first time the light was turned on to ccc what the animal would do. lo the astonishment of the experimenter, the prisoner, though slow and clumsy from his frozen, feet, showed no hesitation as he pursued his complicated path to the food. lhe only explanation o f such powers is that in the rat's brain is some, portion sensitive to th© magnetic Jines of force of the .earth, just as a compass is. And that this brain area tells the rat exactly to what part of the compass his head is pointed. This compass-orgpn must be in wonderfully close connection with the rodent's memory, so that, having once made a trip through a labyrinth which a man would need, a week to commit to memory, even with the awl of daylight ain<l compass, he can unhesitatingly repeat it without mistake^ : _______