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Published online 14 December 2007 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2007.379

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Gerbils can distinguish 'me' from 'you'

Rodents quickly learn to interpret verbal cues.

Philip Ball

If you say something to a gerbil, will it understand? Two researchers have succeeded in training gerbils to recognize human vowel sounds, and have found that they can easily distinguish, say, an 'oo' (as in 'you') from an 'ee' (as in 'me').

Joan Sinnott and Kelly Mosteller of the University of South Alabama in Mobile know, of course, that gerbils are never going to understand the semantics of human speech; they're not trying to train the gerbils to understand words or sentences.

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  • Hi Phillip, Nice article, but your photo is a bit misleading. That is a Duprassis (Fat Tailed Gerbil) in the picture, you might want to use a photo of the type of gerbil on which the research was conducted. Here is a photo of a Mongolian Gerbil (Meriones unguiculates) for you to use gratis. [IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v316/chrisandra/cptside.jpg[/IMG]

    • 18 Dec, 2007
    • Posted by: C. L. Van Eysinga

  • I had the same comment. Very interesting article, but the picture is a duprasi (fat tail jird). Also, unlike rats, gerbils are not especially food motivated by are extremely exploratory. Scientists may get faster results and find that the gerbils are "smarter" if the two options were a path to a fun place to explore and the other was a dead end.

    • 26 Dec, 2007
    • Posted by: Donna A.