Here, Kitty Kitty Kitty

Although Yale University is thought of as one of the best in the world and we could surmise it employs some of the smartest people in the world, I am not always sure if that's true.

A psychiatry professor there wanted to see what happens in our brain during our feeding behaviors (when eating Brussels sprouts, the brain seems to be weeping and wailing, "Kill me now! Kill me now!"). So he used an experiment to "turn on" a section of a mouse's brain that's connected to its amygdala, a more primitive part of the brain that wakes up when we're being predatory. The laser light shined on li'l Squeaker's gray matter turned him into a wee ravening beast, attempting to attack and eat just about anything in his cage except other mice. Including things that aren't actually edible, like bottle caps and rolls of tape. He didn't stop until the laser was switched off.

Now, Mr. Jinks, Jerry and Scratchy's opinions to the contrary, mice are considered dangerous mostly in their potential to spread disease, as they are small and couldn't eat very much of you if they tried (Mouse restaurant sign: "This pinkie toe free if eaten in one hour!") But there are a whole bunch of them, so finding a switch that turns them into bottomless pits of hungry rage doesn't seem like such a smart idea to me.

Of course, I didn't graduate from Yale, so I may be missing something there.