When the world admired the boldness and tenacity of Pizza Rat, a rat that went viral after it was filmed dragging a giant slice of pizza down the stairs of a New York City subway station, we implicitly acknowledged that there’s something special about the animals that share our cities.  

Scientists had guesses about what that something was—perhaps it had to do with their problem-solving abilities or their fearlessness of people—but they wanted to put it to the test.  

A team captured fifty-three Barbados bullfinches from urban and rural sites throughout the island of Barbados. Then, they put the finches through a series of behavioral tests. They tested boldness by observing how long it took the birds to eat seeds after a human disturbance, and neophobia—the fear of new things—by placing unfamiliar objects next to the birds’ food and watching their reactions. The birds were also tested on their problem-solving abilities by having to figure out how to get food out of small drawers and a tunnel, and on skills called acquisition learning, which tests how quickly adaptive behaviors are learned, and reversal learning, which tests behavioral flexibility.  The scientists found that the urban bullfinches were bolder and faster at problem solving than their rural counterparts. However, the urban birds were more afraid of new things, and were no better at acquisition learning or reversal learning than the rural birds. Another difference was that urban birds had enhanced immunity compared to rural birds.  All those advantages are good news for birds living in urban environments, because we all know making it in a city isn’t easy. (270)

      This Moment of Science comes from Indiana University.

D:Hey Yael, do you have...

Y:Shh!  I'm watching my favorite medical drama, "Very Attractive Doctors."

D:Sorry.  What's going on?

Y:A terrible accident victim was just brought into the ER.  Oh no, she's flatlining!  Quick, grab those paddle things and shock her!

D:Wrong move.

Y:Whaddya mean?  See, Dr. Smith is trying to shock her back to life.  Flat line!  Clear!  Zap!

D:That may be how it's done on TV, but not in real life.  See, those paddles, which are part of a machine called a defibrillator, don't work by shocking the heart back into action after its stopped beating.  The word fibrillate mean flutter.  It's used to describe what can happen when you have a heart attack.  When the electrical pulses that make your heart beat go haywire your heart starts to beat irregularly, or flutter.  

Y:So what do the paddles do?

D:They use just enough voltage to shock the heart back into a regular rhythm without burning the skin.  It's kind of like restarting a computer when it freezes up.  The defibrillator tries to do just what its name means--it de-fibrillates, meaning that it stops the irregular beating and resets the heart to beat regularly.  

Y:And when the patient flatlines?

D:Then her heart has stopped beating.  That's when its time for CPR and drugs, not the paddles.  A defibrillator can't shock a heart back into life after its stopped working.  It can only help stop a heart attack.

Y:[CHAGRINED] So "Very Attractive Doctors" isn't one hundred percent medically accurate.

D:No, but it is totally Hollywood.