ABSTRACT
In James Tiptree’s science fiction short story ‘The psychologist who wouldn’t do awful things to rats’, the researcher Lipsitz sketches the edge behaviour of the common rat (Fig. 13.1), and explains:
There’s an enormous difference between the way Rattus and Cricetus – [rats and hamsters] – behave in the open field, and they’re both rodents. Even as simple a thing as edge behaviour – … Edges. I mean the way the animal responds to edges and the shape of the environment … it’s basic to living and nobody seems to have explored it. 1
The edge behaviour of <italic>Rattus Rattus</italic>. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203561256/c238f0e3-adcb-466c-a400-205d8668134e/content/fig13_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> (From J.R. Tiptree, in D. Hartwell and K. Cramer, (eds), The Ascent of Wonder. The Evolution of Hard SF, London: Orbit, 1994, Fig.18.)