¿The rat bathing/shower rat?: scientific explanation of this viral video.

The new sensation of the Internet is a video shared on social networks where you can see, at first glance, a rat bathing. In the audiovisual material one can contemplate how the small animal carves the body with desperation trying to remove the soap that is on its body. Many users showed their fascination by observing an animal behaving like a human, but is it normal?

The video is entitled "shower rat", but right in the name it has two big mistakes. One is not a rat, it is a pacarana, a rodent very common in South America; and two, she is not taking a bath, the pacaranas do not need to bathe. According to experts, these animals are cleaned by licking, so the soap is not good for them.

Why does she look so strange while "cleaning herself?"

Probably because she is not cleaning herself, at least, she does not deliberately soaps herself as a kind of human form.

DJ José Correa, who says he recorded the video, explained to the Daily Mail that he was about to take a shower when he saw the intruder on Saturday morning. "He was like a human being, I've never seen anything like this."

Dallas Krentzel, a specialist in evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago, told Newsweek that "it makes sense that this animal washes like a human being because it needs the mobility of the forelimb for food and food processing."

What probably happened was that some person was funny to spill soap on the animal and to realize the desperation of the pacarana to remove it decided to record the video. This act was described by the experts as "inhumane".