College rodents shoot
for gold at Wesleyan
By Sarah Baker
Senior staff writer
Imagine being blind and trying to
jump over the Grand Canyon.
And then imagine the only prize
after completing this death-defying
feat is a few measly pellets of food that
certainly don’t look all that appetizing.
That’s the situation that Pink,
Fluffy and about a dozen other rats
faced Saturday at the 22nd annual Rat
Olympics.
The Olympics, a long standing tra
dition at Nebraska Wesleyan
University, attracts crowds year after
year as the rodents compete in events
such as the long jump, the 5-foot rope
climb and the speed press.
And in the world of competitive
sport, some rats are definitely superior
toothers.
“She is not one of our star rats,”
Jeff Meese, a sophomore psychology
major, said of his rat, Pink.
Pink was not faring well in the
long jump, an event in which two plat
forms are placed farther and farther
apart The rat, which has been trained
to respond to the sound of jingling
keys, is expected to jump across the
expanse.
“She does it, but just not fast
enough,” Meese said. “She’s done bet
ter in the other events though.”
The rats are trained to respond to
sound, because though they are nearly
blind, they have excellent hearing.
“(Pink) can’t even see as far as she
jumps,” Meese said.
The blindness could explain the
fright some of the rats seemed to feel
before their jumps, some of them even
experiencing loss of bladder control.
In other cases, wild platform jumps in
tiie wrong direction resulted in crash
landings on the white tile floor.
Discomfort also afflicted the rat
“parents” - their student owners. One
was scratching'furiously at a batch of
hives resulting from her rat’s fur.
Others had their hands covered by
their rodents’ messes.
The rats are trained as part of
Wesleyan Professor Ken Keith’s
Learning and Motivation course.
Keith, chairman of the Wesleyan
psychology department, said because
of the Olympic-style events, the
course has become one of the most
popular in the college.
Keith said the students take away
more than just an unusual experience
from the class. v
“A number of these students will
go into careers where they will work
with kids or disabled patients who
don’t just do what you tell diem to do
automatically, he said. “This teaches
them how to use the kind of reinforce
ment tactics they will need.”
In addition, Keith said, the experi
ment gives the students a chance to try
out a lot of the material they read
about in the textbook for the course.
“This is a lot of fun, but it also has
a serious aim,” Keith said. “It makes
the labs a lot more enjoyable and
meaningful.”
And for the so-called “star rats,”
the Olympics couldn’t have been more
exciting.
Leigh Fischer, a junior psychology
major at Wesleyan, was pleasantly sur
prised at her rat Fluffy’s performance.
“Fluffy would only jump 3 inches
in the lab, but today she has made it up
to 37 inches,” Fischer said with a grin.
“I’m trying to get her to go for 45, but
so far she just doesn’t have the height”
Fischer and Fluffy tried repeatedly
to make die jump, which, according to
Keith, would have been a “world
record breaker,” but to no avail.
Fluffy could launch herself only so
high, and made it into Fischer’s hand,
which was at a lower height than the
required platform.
But neither rat nor master seemed
too upset. Although Fluffy never made
it the audience seemed pleased with
the performance.
One spectator observed, “You
gotta be pretty good on the other side
to catch a flying rat.”
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Russian space module
can be seen over Lincoln
By Josh Nichols
Staff writer
If you are stumbling home from a
party at 5 or 6 ajn. and glimpse a light
moving across the sky, don’t worry. It’s
not a UFO, and you are not seeing
things. You’ve only spotted Zarya.
Zarya ig a space module that was
released by Russia 2 Vi weeks ago and
is now visible in Lincoln skies.
The module is the first piece of the
International Space Station being
developed by the United States,
Russia, Germany and other countries.
The space module will be visible
for about two to four minutes once
every day over Lincoln skies for the
next few weeks.
Jack Dunn, Mueller Planetarium
coordinator, said if you are looking for
the module, it will look like a small
glowing dot that moves across the sky.
He said the visibility of the object
will depend on the angle ofthe sun and
the location of the module in die sky.
Zarya generally will appear early
in the morning around 5 or 6 a.m.
The exact times the module will be
visible are on the German Space
Operation Center’s Web site:
http./Avww.gsoc.dlr.de/satvis/.
According to the Web site, the
module will be visible Tuesday morn
ing at 5:51 a.m..
UNL Astronomy Professor
Martin Gaskell said, “It will be one of
the brightest stars in the sky in the
morning.”
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