A scientist has taught his pet rats how to play a video game.
A scientist taught his pet rats how to play a video game
Viktor Toth conducted the experiment that the rodents are good decision makers and can be just as smart as humans while playing the shooting game 'Doom'.
The rodents - named Carmack, Romero, and Tom after the game's creators - were able to independently navigate themselves through a series of mazes, open doors and even shoot monsters.
Toth, a neuroscientist from Budapest, Hungary, said: "Rats can be taught very complex tasks and I wanted to teach them to move in the right direction of the game without me interfering.
"To train them, the rats got rewarded with sugary water when they turned in the right direction.
"I put them on a moving ball which allowed them to play the game in first-person character - it took a lot of effort to teach them how to run on this but we got there in the end."