A sure bet: Rats pick Kansas over Memphis

RICHMOND, Va. - Punxsutawney can keep its overgrown rodent. Richmond has a method of prognostication that is much cuter, and every bit as scientific.

Want to know who is going to win the NCAA men’s basketball tournament? Just ask the rats at the Science Museum of Virginia.

Four nimble and surprisingly athletic rats played out their own version of the Division I tournament Thursday. Each rat represented a different team in the Final Four.

It wasn’t a squeaker. Look for Kansas to defeat Memphis in the finals by a score of 72-60. Or possibly 36-30. In what the museum dubs its Rat Basketball League — it even has its own logo — each basket counts for only one point.

The rats played their five-minute games on a Lucite court, a hoop hanging from either end. Grasping a small Wiffle ball in their mouths, they race (or perhaps scurry) down the court, reach up and push the ball through the hoops, following with their whole bodies. It’s what the museum calls a “body dunk.“

After each score, the rats run over to the side to receive a tasty treat, a piece of Grape Nuts cereal. Apparently, it reminds them of wild hickory nuts.

While one rat is being fed, the other rat has the chance to snatch the ball in its own mouth, run down to the other hoop and body-dunk it through. Sometimes they steal the ball or shield it from the other rat.

It’s a fast-paced game, though the players occasionally pause to chew their food or use their hind legs to scratch behind their ears. And of course, between games the court occasionally has to be cleaned.

The rats don’t dribble the ball — just like in the pros! And they don’t wear uniforms because, frankly, they would just chew them off.

The rats have been trained by gallery education assistant director Laura Kramer, who also acts as their coach. In a process that takes four to five months, she uses what is known as operant conditioning to get them incrementally first to touch the ball, pick it up and learn to push it through the hoop. When they do something right, they get a piece of food; if they do it wrong, they get none.

The museum currently has seven rats, though only five of them play. For the other two, who were slow to pick up the game, “basketball is not in their future,“ Kramer said.

The rats are intelligent and, contrary to their reputation, quite clean, Kramer said. The museum buys them at a pet store and uses them to demonstrate how animals can learn through positive reinforcement.

Though they don’t typically play a tournament, the rats generally play two games a day for the cause of education.

And just as in real basketball, it’s more fun if you have money on the outcome.

Daniel Neman is a staff writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.