Researchers have now trained rats to tell the difference between Dutch and Japanese. No, I'm not making that up. Well, actually it's not the same rat who can tell whether someone is speaking Dutch or Japanese. Different groups of rats were taught to respond to either Dutch or Japanese, and the Dutch-trained rats did not respond to Japanese and vice versa. To answer the obvious question of why anyone would train rats to recognize the difference between Dutch and Japanese, this is trying to track down what parts of language processing are uniquely human; I'm reasonably certain these researchers are not working on breeding a rodent translator.
Parents: This one seems ready-made for science projects. Pick up a bunch of rats and a tape deck and you're all set.
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