Who is smarter: a rat or a mouse? - briefly
Rats display greater cognitive capacity than mice, as evidenced by superior performance in maze navigation, learning speed, and problem‑solving tasks. Consequently, they are considered the more intelligent of the two species.
Who is smarter: a rat or a mouse? - in detail
Rats demonstrate superior cognitive performance compared to mice across multiple experimental domains. Their larger neocortical surface area enables more complex information processing, reflected in faster acquisition of maze tasks and higher accuracy in discrimination tests.
Learning speed:
- In radial-arm mazes, rats reach criterion performance after fewer trials than mice.
- Operant conditioning experiments show rats develop lever-press habits with fewer reinforcement cycles.
Memory retention:
- Long‑term spatial memory, measured by probe trials in the Morris water maze, persists longer in rats.
- Delayed matching‑to‑sample tasks reveal rats maintain correct responses over longer intervals.
Problem‑solving ability:
- Rats solve multi‑step puzzles, such as tool use to retrieve food, whereas mice typically fail at comparable challenges.
- In detour tasks, rats navigate around obstacles with fewer errors.
Social cognition:
- Rats exhibit empathy‑like behaviors, including freeing trapped conspecifics, a response rarely observed in mice.
- Hierarchical social structures in rat colonies are more pronounced, indicating advanced social learning.
Sensory processing:
- Both species possess acute olfaction, but rats display finer discrimination of odor mixtures, supporting more nuanced foraging strategies.
Neurobiological correlates:
- Rat brains contain a higher density of hippocampal neurons, correlating with enhanced spatial mapping.
- Synaptic plasticity markers, such as long‑term potentiation, are more robust in rat hippocampi.
Overall, comparative data from behavioral assays, neuroanatomical measurements, and electrophysiological studies converge on the conclusion that rats possess greater intelligence than mice.