Rats laugh too

This brief video is on a blog called This Lively Earth. The video is so incredibly charming I sent it to several friends but think it deserves a home here too.

The transponder used to translate rat sounds into sounds we can hear was designed for bat hunters. Sometimes, during the summer, naturalists down Broadway at Lenoir Preserve have bat nights. They'll take a crowd of people out to the meadow overlooking the Hudson and bring out these gadgets. In the dark silence, suddenly the howls and screeches and hissing of the bats wheeling overhead comes through. It's eerie to think that these almost invisible creatures are darting about overhead surrounded by a racket only they can hear.

Of course, you have to like little mammals to be really sympathetic to the rats (and I can't say my previous acquaintance with rats has been friendly). But when Lydia was growing up, our household had ferrets -- never more than four at a time but over the years, seven or eight. And they definitely laughed and giggled when their tummies were tickled.