Question: how do rats have such good navigation skills

Claire El Mouden answered on 26 Jun 2013:

Rats need to be able to find their way around their environment to survive. Therefore natural selection favoured rats with better memories and navigation skills…living things that don’t need to move around (e.g. plants), have not been selected to have such skills.

Rats are particularly good as their lifestyle is one where they live in a variety of habitats, and survive by eating lots of different types of food. Therefore they need to be very good at remembering where everything is.