Overcoming a Financial Crisis. Simone Janson

bend with humans. But if rats and pigeons follow the apprentices' theories of economists, does it mean that we know how people behave? Can the behavior of animals be transferred to humans?

      Economic laws in the cage

      Hard to say. The researchers argue differently: If simple ideas fail in economic experiments, why should they work in a much more complex world beyond the cages?

      Animal experiments are, so to speak, an attempt to refute economic theories - if animals do not stick to them, then why people? So how do you test complicated economic hypotheses on animals? How would you describe that? Let's design an experiment. Let's take rats.

      An unconditional basic income

      For example, a rat named E4. Researchers are a little sentimental - while we give our animals lovely names - treasure, darling, hasi, angels or mistvieh - animals, the actual stars of the experiments, are only given with letters and numbers in scientific papers. A little heartless.

      But back to E4. First, we give E4, a stately rat, free, unlimited access to normal feed and water, an unconditional basic income.

      But a little luxury must be, so E4 has the choice between two other drinks: Root Beer - a terribly sweet, alcohol-free blend of herbal and root extracts - and a Tom Collins mix, which is a cocktail of lemon juice and sugar syrup. The gin, which usually refines this mix, we leave for obvious reasons.

       Text comes from: Das Leben ist ein Zoo: Geschäftstüchtige Affen, gefiederte Panzerknacker und Fische in der Waschstraße. Die erstaunlichen Parallelen zwischen Mensch und Tier (2015) by Professor Dr. Hanno Beck, published by FAZ Verlag, Reprints by friendly permission of the publisher.