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One of the two rats in the above picture isn’t really a rat. One of the two rats in the above picture is, in fact, a robot. Look closely and you can just barely figure it out. Meanwhile, the rat that isn’t a robot is seriously depressed, because that’s what this robot specializes in: rat depression.

I should hope that you’re wondering right now just why the heck someone would design a robot that exists only to instill depression in rats, since that seems kind of terrifying, to be honest. Fortunately, there’s a simple answer: We need depressed rats to be able to test drugs that treat depression. Before trying drugs out on humans, they get tested on animals, and if you think you’ve got a drug that can safely make depressed people less depressed, it first needs to be able to safely make depressed rats less depressed, and that requires a bunch of depressed rats. [Read More]