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Re:Heroic rat retiring from detecting land mines by spywaregorilla on Friday June 04, 2021 @04:16PM (#27398609)
> 1. The rat having informed consent about what this work entails (not possible, given a rat's limited ability to understand what land mines are)

You can totally enjoy something while being ignorant to aspects of the task

> 2. In good faith, the rat having been given many alternatives as to what it wishes to do, without coercion

You can enjoy doing a task, while still enjoying something else more.

Sounds to me like this rat had a pretty good time eating bananas.

Re:Heroic rat retiring from detecting land mines by vidanay on Friday June 04, 2021 @04:18PM (#27398625)
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Re:Heroic rat retiring from detecting land mines by ceejayoz on Friday June 04, 2021 @04:28PM (#27398722)
Rats enjoy and seek out tickling.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/rats-tick...

> Panksepp and Burgdorf showed that the animals remembered areas in their enclosures where they had been tickled before and routinely returned to those sites.

> And in the current study, rats were observed performing something called Freudensprünge, or “joy jumps,” after tickling.

They can also apparently feel regret:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rats-experience-f...

> Rats showed both a behavioral sign of regret (turning and looking at the missed high-value reward) and were then more willing to wait for a reward following regret-inducing instances, indicating that they learned from their mistake.

Re:Heroic rat retiring from detecting land mines by nicoburns on Friday June 04, 2021 @04:26PM (#27398695)
You have no idea what it's like to be a rat, and no basis by which to make this claim. Given that they are intelligent mammals closely related to humans and with similar brain structures, it seems plausible, even likely, that they experience emotions thst are similar (if not entirely the same) as ours.

Humans are driven by food and reproduction too, but that doesn't mean we don't also experience a wide range of complex emotions.

Re:Heroic rat retiring from detecting land mines by treeman79 on Friday June 04, 2021 @04:32PM (#27398753)
Ah typical old school scientific Nonsense. Similar to old theories that babies don’t feel pain.

Spend a significant amount of time around animals and you will see a lot beyond the more base rutting instincts.