14 DAY TRIAL // Judging by what one team of researchers has to say about rats, some might suspect that these rodents are related to vampires.
Long story short, it is now being said that excess light bothers these animals so much that they get SAD.
In case anyone was wondering, I did not write “SAD” instead of “sad” in an attempt to emphasize that summer days make rats really gloomy. Quite the contrary: SAD stands for seasonal affective disorder.
As Daily Mail explains, rats are equipped to live in the dark, which is why longer days that pack a tad too much sunlight do not sit all that well with them.
More precisely, the rats show clear signs of being both stressed and anxious.
“We're diurnal and rats are nocturnal. So for the rat, it's the longer days that produce stress, while for us it's the longer nights that create stress,” Professor Nicholas Spitzer says.