If you hang around on the right parts of YouTube for long enough, you may come across the web district of rat tickling. You’ll see scientists tickling rats in the lab to boost their well-being and owners tickling their pets, among other things.
Now, new research has identified the parts of the brain that may be responsible for play and laughter by tickling rats in the lab, according to a study published recently in the journal Neuron.
“Play is really a not-well understood behavior,” says Michael Brecht, a neurobiologist at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
For the new study, Brecht and his colleagues got rats used to an enclosure for a while before the games began. They then began to play a game aptly named “chase the hand” that the rodents enjoyed, before tickling their bellies and the nape of their necks while the critters laid on their backs.
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