Joshua's trained rats include his personal pets from before the war and rats from a colony kept at the Paris zoo — they are not wild-caught, although there is some outcrossing. How useful could trained rats really be, what kinds of things could they be trained to do, and how much is it reasonable to fudge this? Would it be plausible to use cocaine (widely available in the late 19th century in over-the-counter lozenges sold e.g. as toothache remedies) as part of a reinforcement training scheme, and would it be possible to determine and deliver an appropriate dose given 19th century knowledge of pharmacology and animal behavior, a detail-oriented savant, and a Babbage engine running (more or less) MATLAB? Also, how can the use of (currently) illegal narcotics as part of a military mind control experiment be presented sympathetically in a YA novel?
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branchandroot
Training rats
Date: 2010-02-05 08:50 pm (UTC)