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Stoned Rats Prefer Reggae Music

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While Reggae music fans seem to enjoy ganja a bit more than the common populace, the reasons between this association have remained obscure. While some sociologists defend it is a cultural trait, others believe the regular consumption of hemp makes individuals more prone to enjoying “No woman no cry.” A team of Spanish researchers from the Universitat de Barcelona set out to solve the dispute and have recently published their findings in Behavioral and Brain Science.

The team, led by Francesc Batllori, fed rats a mixture of marihuana and rat pellets and monitored their evolution for three months. Once a day, the researchers would place rats inside the “music room” where the rats could enjoy music of different genres.

“There were five different chambers” explains Batllori. “In each of them we played a different kind of music. We chose Classical (usually Bach), Pop, R&B, Goth metal and Reggae.” The researchers would then let the rats choose where they wanted to be.

None of the rats like Justin Bieber

 

“Before feeding them cannabis, rats would usually choose either Bach or R&B, with a few sad individuals opting for Goth Metal. None of them chose pop, but we believe it was because we mainly just played Justin Bieber.” After feeding them the cannabis-loaded pellets, things changed: “the rats started flocking the Reggae room. There was almost no space. You could see their already tiny eyes half-closed, while their bodies swayed rhythmically to the sides. I couldn’t believe my eyes.”

The group has also observed other particular behavioral pattern among the rats. “They started squeaking and biting every time we wanted to wash them” says Batllori. “At the end we had to give up. They also became much less aggressive and territorial and started sharing their females. It was really remarkable indeed.”

Rats became less aggressive and territorial

 

Batllori refuses to extrapolate his findings to people just yet. “We need to conduct more research, first with monkeys, then with humans” he says. “In order to eliminate possible biases, we have to make sure our subjects have never heard about reggae or cannabis before.” When asked where he expects to find such test subjects, he replies: “I guess we’ll just have to use children.”

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