Meet ratus-smartus
Scientists have created the first uber-rat.
Hobbie-J is the cleverest rat that has ever lived thanks to some genetic tinkering.
An experiment carried out at the Medical College of Georgia saw a rat embryo injected with genetic material to boost a gene that controls memory.
Hobbie-J, named after a Chinese cartoon character, can remember objects for three times longer than other rats and is better at finding its way through mazes.
According to a report at the Telegraph, the success brings hope for future dementia patients as it is thought the gene enhancement could one day be used in a drug treatment for human brain disorders.
Now this sounds all well and good, and I'm all for helping people who suffer from dementia, but creating super-clever rats sounds dangerous.
One day they may become... (pause, followed by dramatic music) TOO clever!
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Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
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