Riddles, brain puzzles and mathematical problems

[MyRedNeptune]

Nope. But even if you could I can't see how this helps you.

Dammit. Well ok. It actually doesn't matter anyway.

Spoiler below!

The answer is 10 rats.

Let's arrange our medicine into a row of 1000 bottles plus 24 imaginary bottles. It is possible to find the poison in 10 steps. Each step 1 rat will be used.

1. Split the row of 1024 in halves A and B and give A (512 samples of medicine) to rat 1.
2. Split A and B into AA, AB, BA, BB and give AA and BA to rat 2.
3. Split AA, AB, BA, BB into AAA, AAB, ABA, ABB, BAA, BAB, BBA, BBB and give AAA, ABA, BAA, BBA to rat 3.

Continue in such a manner to step 10, where rat 10 will be given all the odd-numbered samples. Each step the rat will either die or stay alive, limiting the possible area of location of the poison by half.

This chart, in which each separate rat's sample portion is marked by a darker cell color, illustrates the proccess:

P.S. Sorry it took so long. I had it ready after my last post but I made a bit of a detour.