Scientists in Georgia and China developed Hobbie-J's superior brain by modifying the NR2B gene, which in turn increased NMBA receptor sites on the brain's individual neurons (which are sort of like pores). Bigger pores equals every so slightly increased transfer duration of neuron-to-neuron messages, allowing Hobbie-J learn things more efficiently. But Hobbie-J also has a better memory as well, remembering novel toys up to 3 times longer than peers.

Apparently the super rat processed complex situations better, but Hobbie-J wasn't capable of any sort of higher level cognition associated with larger-brained mammals. Or we just weren't smart enough to notice. [Physorg via PopSci]

The full story is over at Wired, and is quite interesting, but one of the effects achieved was to basically reverse Parkinson's disease in mice. You should head over to find more, including what they'll do to get around the need to thread fiber through your skull. [Wired]

The king of rat genociders was Mokhairul Islam who killed 83,450 over nine months on his farm. Impressive, when you consider second place took out fewer than half of that, only 37,450 of the bastards. For his efforts, Mokhairul received a measly 14-inch color TV. Which is apparently all the thanks he needed, since he's sworn to keep killing them. But seriously, the guy deserves at least a Vizio plasma or something.

Oh I forgot the really gross part—to prove that he'd really murdered that many rodents to collect his TV, he kept the rats' tails. That means he had a room somewhere filled with 80,000 rotting rats' tails. Ewwwwwwww. [Telegraph]

And two, I hope the fridges on their backs are full of cold beer.

These guys are NASA's Desert RATS, a team dedicated to test space vehicles like the Lunar Electric Rover or the Chariot, which will move astronauts across the Moon and Mars' terrains in the Constellation missions. They are now in the Arizona desert demonstrating the feasibility of the vehicles and the future astronauts' Extra-Vehicular Activities.

One of the many things they are testing is what you can see in the photo above: Suit Ports. The suit ports are located on the Lunar Electric Rover's aft. The are designed to let astronauts get in and out their suits very quickly, using a rear-entry hatch. They are equipped with alignment guides and electromagnetic mechanisms to lock and unlock to the hatch, so astronauts only have to get in, unlock, go do their thing, and then just lock to the LER again, and get out of the suit as quickly as they got in. Neat. [NASA]

That secret is Brilliant Blue G dye, a variant of Blue Number One, which is a common and harmless food coloring product. Scientists dropped weights on the rats' backs to break their little spinal cords, injecting the Brilliant Blue G dye in their bodies. The dye turned their skins blue, but within weeks all motor functions returned to normal. The rat could walk, run, jump, have sex, and do whatever it wanted.

According to the study, the dye prevented inflammation of the spinal cord. Not only it is as simple as that, but one of the neurologists—Maiken Nedergaard—says that they can't find "clinical effects on the rat." This is one of the things that they should start trying in humans as soon as possible. Better to look like a smurf than neer walking again. [National Geographic]

Even though the rats being used are the Giant Gambian variety, they're still too light to set off most mines that they find. Trainers devised a harness that guides the rats systematically over a 100-meter square area, and a team of two can clear two such 100 square meter fields in a day. When they find the mines, they're rewarded with bananas.

The project has been going on for several years in multiple mine-strewn African zones, with some pretty significant success. You can donate by adopting a mini-sniffing rat online at, appropriately, HeroRat.org. [Hero Rats via Afrigadget]

The acoustic kitty was a bionic feline with a 3/4-inch radio transmitter embedded at the base of its skull. The transmitter's antenna was woven in to the cat's fur, while the microphone was placed in the cat's ear canal. Yes, PeTA members, the cat project did consider "questions of humane treatment." Once the system was up and running, the cats didn't seem to mind it at all. Boom, total success right? Well, no. Spycraft author Bob Wallace told me in an interview: "The cat wanted to do what the cat wanted to do, and not what we wanted it to do."

The British secret service actually used mice in a similar fashion, not as live microphones, but as a means to drag wire along the studs inside walls. The CIA trained pigeons to fly to laser dots and drop payloads, generally wireless mics. Obviously dogs too were trained for ops—though the Soviets were up on dog training, too, according to Spycraft co-author Keith Melton: the KGB trained dogs to sniff out the glue used by the CIA in equipment drops.

Says Melton re: animals in the line of duty: "If you have a choice between putting human and animals at risk—and I'm an animal lover—you have to use an animal."Dead animals worked as well or better. Deceased rats, which apparently had lived long happy lives and died of natural causes, were hollowed out and used to stash secret information for drops in hostile territory. The reasoning was that people don't go around picking up dead rats to see what's inside. As for animals who might be looking for a tasty snack, the rats were painted with Tabasco sauce, repellent to every critter but humans. Fun fact: The CIA used white rats for this, so that they could dye them to match the indigenous coloration of local rats.Before the CIA was born, live rats—with wings—were considered for strategic use. Project X-Ray a.k.a. BAT was an OSS plan to release 1 million bats rigged with tiny explosives over Japan towards the end of World War II. Bats from Carlsbad Cavern in New Mexico were brought to a test facility. According to Spycraft, the bats' most successful test run resulted in the fiery destruction of a new hangar. The plan was killed off, it seems, because no one knew how to automate the bat-arming process in a cost-effective manner. Bombs were also attempted with the Norwegian rat and trained domestic cats, who were supposed to swim to a target after being dropped in the ocean. (Anyone see a problem with that?) [More CIA Spytech on Giz]

All of this CIA tech and much more like it is covered with great depth and hair-raising anecdotes in Spycraft, a new book by Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton, reviewed by us, and available for pre-order at Amazon.

Specifically, the fiber optic cable in Production Room 8 (now out of commission) at XM's headquarters in D.C.? These aren't the friendly kind you experiment on in high school, either. A senior VP told employees, "Those of you familiar with D.C. rodents know that we're looking at the size of small house cats."

While there's been no service disruption yet, the exec added that, "Tomorrow it could be a cable to a satellite uplink. It is that serious." If I worked at XM, I'd be filling out an application for Sirius pronto, before the rats ate me. – Matt Buchanan

RODENT PANIC [Page Six]