surprised the rats don't just have one sniff and bite the researchers in the finger, wine smells offensive to my dinky-ass sense of smell, i can only imagine what a punch it must be to a rat
this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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A good Ig Nobel contender here
But, do they know what to pair them with?
They're not what you'd call similar varietals, and rats have powerful olfaction. It's not surprising in itself, unless you're in the habit of thinking of animals as being essentially lesser than humans.
They're at opposite sides of the sweetness spectrum, they should be distinguishable by sugar content alone.
Riesling can be anywhere in the sweetness scale, both can be equally dry.
Even Trocken is still sweeter than I'd associate with a Sauvignon Blanc, and if they're just calling it "Riesling" it's probably a Spatlese or something.
Any Riesling from Alsace will be XD.
I can distinguish those, and compared to rats I don't have a sense of smell. That doesn't surprise me much.
It seems really weird to assume that rats don't have linguistic skills given everything we've been learning recently about non-human communication, coupled with the fact that they're extremely social and will not stop chattering away about who knows what. I think a more solitary animal would be better suited to indicating that language and categorization skills may be unrelated, which is unfortunate because they're much harder to work with.