Rats use their whiskers in a way that is closely related to the human sense of touch: Just as humans move their fingertips across a surface to perceive shapes and textures, rats twitch their whiskers to achieve the same goal.

High-speed video of rats using their whiskers to explore different surfaces has given researchers significant insights into the subtle mechanics of their tactile sensory system. Such information is important because the rat tactile machinery is a widely used laboratory model for studying how energy from sound or touch is translated into neural activity.

Seabird colonies on islands are highly vulnerable to introduced rats, which find the ground-nesting birds to be easy prey. But the ecological impacts of rats on islands extend far beyond seabird nesting colonies, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

A new initiative, bringing together nine research groups from seven countries, including teams of robotics and brain researchers from Europe, the USA and Israel, has recently been set up with the aim of imitating nature.

A tiny possum and a giant rat were recorded by scientists as probable new species on a recent expedition to Indonesia’s remote and virtually unknown “Lost World” in the pristine wilderness of western New Guinea’s Foja Mountains.

A brain-imaging study of genetically obese rats conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory provides more evidence that dopamine - a brain chemical associated with reward, pleasure, movement, and motivation - plays a role in obesity.

Cooperation in animals has long been a major focus in evolutionary biology. In particular, reciprocal altruism, where helpful acts are contingent upon the likelihood of getting help in return, is especially intriguing because it is open to cheaters.

Rats paralyzed due to loss of blood flow to the spine returned to near normal ambulatory function six weeks after receiving grafts of human spinal stem cells (hSSCs), researchers from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine report. The study, led by Martin Marsala, M.D., UC San Diego professor of anesthesiology, is published in the June 29, 2007 issue of the journal Neuroscience, which is now online.