Rats are highly intelligent social animals whose cognitive complexity has profound implications for how they should be treated.
Rat cognition research has transformed scientific understanding of animal intelligence. The same capacities used to justify primate welfare protections — social cognition, emotional complexity, metacognition, empathy — are now documented in rats. This creates significant welfare obligations across the contexts in which rats are used or controlled: laboratory research, pest control, and the pet industry. Methods of rat pest control that cause prolonged suffering — glue traps, slow-acting poisons — become considerably harder to justify given the demonstrated suffering capacity of these animals.