"It's almost like seeing pigs fly," enthuses Professor Lambert.
The experiment that launched in 2019 is crazy.
Neurobiologists from the University of Richmond in the US state of Virginia wanted to teach rats how to drive small cars.
Six females and eleven males took these driving lessons.
The exercise consists of learning to navigate new routes.
“We know they have a very good sense of direction on their feet.
They follow the same paths over and over again in the wild.
And so one of the things we wanted to see was if they had this really good sense of direction in a vehicle, rather than using their body to get around,” says lab specialist Olivia Harding. research at the University of Richmond.
"There's often a little moment where they sniff around and try to figure out what's going on.
And then they put their paws on the lever.
And they just have to press the lever, and it makes the car move forward.
And they lead to what's called a candy tree where there's breakfast cereal on straws with marshmallow.
And as soon as they get to this candy tree, they are rewarded with these cereals and they eat them.
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“I had confidence in their ability to do it.
I had less confidence in our ability to design the car, install and learn to get them to do it.
But once they did, it was sort of magical.
It makes laugh.
And we filmed it and showed it to our colleagues,” smiles Kelly Lambert.