Rats are able to play the odds in a "gambling task" designed by scientists to test the biology of addiction.

In the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, researchers describe how the rodents developed a "strategy" in a timed task where they make choices to earn treats. The rodents avoided high-reward options because these carried high risks of punishment - their sugar pellet supply being cut off for a period.

This decision-making task provides an animal model to study neuropsychiatry. During the task, which lasted for 30 minutes, rats were given four choices - in the form of holes to investigate. Nosing each of these holes triggered either the delivery of tasty sugar pellets or a "punishing time-out period" during which rewards could not be earned.

But high-reward holes - those that delivered more pellets at once - also carried the bigger risk of triggering longer periods of punishment. And rats quickly learned an "optimal strategy" - earning more pellets over the duration of the task by choosing the holes with smaller gains and smaller penalties.

In trap number three...

Of course rats weren't the first...

The original was here