scientific experiment

Rats are nasty creatures that people generally do not want to have around except for the domesticated ones that are kept as pets . The main reason that people do not want rats around is because they have an uncanny knack at finding kept food and ruining it . This investigates whether it is primarily sight or smell that draws rats to food

According to Anne , the rat 's sense of smell affects many of its behaviors . Newborn rats supposedly detect what to eat through smelling their mothers ' milk . As they grow older , rats

associate food with the scent of recently eaten food as well as the breath of other rats . On the other hand , Cooper conducted an experiment testing the rats sense of smell against its sense of sight in navigating through a maze and found that the sense of sight contributed more effectively in helping the rat through the test than the sense of smell

The following are the hypotheses that can be tested . First , the rat is able to find its way to food using only its sense of sight . Second , the rat is able to find its way to food using only its sense of smell Third , the rat needs both sense to be able to find food

In the first hypothesis , it means that given a situation where there is an available food source based on sight but the rat is not able to smell it , the rat will still be attracted to the food . In the second hypothesis , if there is available food that has a strong scent but the rat cannot see it , it should still be able to find its way t the food In the third hypothesis states that in either of the situations mentioned above , the rat will be unable to find food and would only be able to do so if it can both see and smell the food source

The hypotheses were tested using an experiment . The materials used were a rat procured from a local pet shop , a newly fried chicken leg , a plastic chicken leg , and a food screen cover . There were three situations wherein the rat was released in an enclosed setting . The first situation was with the newly fried chicken leg covered by the screen . In this situation , the rat almost immediately proceeded to the screen as soon as it was released and clawed at it to get to the food In the second situation , the plastic chicken was placed at plain sight of the rat . This time the rat took a longer time to interact with the food imitation . I fact , it just went about the enclosure and seemed not to take much interest in the item . The third situation was leaving the newly fried chicken leg out in the open . The rat immediately went for the leg and began taking bites at it . This shows that the rat is very sensitive to smell in finding food but and is not able to detect...