Your peers are rats

Have you ever done something just because your friends did it? Don’t worry, everyone has at some time in their life, it’s called peer group pressure.

Interestingly humans aren’t the only ones who succumb to peer pressure - rats do too. Rats have a tendency to disregard personal experiences and copy the behaviour of their peers. What’s more, the urge to conform appears to be so strong that they will choose to eat food they know to be unpalatable (very yucky) when interacting with other rats that have done the same.

Until now, humans and chimps were the only other animals known to conform in this way. Scientists believe that the discovery emphasises the importance of social learning in the animal kingdom. Read more here.