I was very excited today to see that researchers had found further proof that exercising can stimulate the growth of new brain cells in rats, as well as make them happier. This is great, because any day now, I’m going to get to the gym! So, knowing that I can make myself brainier as well as happier and skinnier is just, err…icing on the cake (so to speak).

However, I must admit that when I looked over the article to see how they determined that exercising was making rats happier, I was a little bit alarmed. Live Science reported that: “To figure out if running turned the down-and-out rats into happy campers, the scientists used a standard ’swim test.’ They measured the amount of time the rats spent immobile in the water and the time they spent swimming around in active mode. When depressed, rats spend most of the time not moving.”

Wait a minute…aren’t rats who exercise likely to be stronger and better swimmers than rats who don’t? Not to mention, doesn’t “not moving” in water = drowning?!?! So, were they really measuring how happy exercise makes rats, or how it lessens their likelihood of drowning in a Norwegian lab experiment?

In either case, this is simply one more reason you should be happy, if for no other reason than you are NOT a rat.