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Rats Feel Each Other's Pain

Posted by Soulskill on from the no-wonder-my-rat-gladiator-farm-never-took-off dept.

sciencehabit writes "Empathy lets us feel another person's pain and drives us to help ease it. But is empathy a uniquely human trait? For decades researchers have debated whether nonhuman animals possess this attribute. Now a new study shows that rats will free a trapped cagemate in distress. The results mean that these rodents can be used to help determine the genetic and physiological underpinnings of empathy in people."

7 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. Misleading Headline by mr1911 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I thought this was going to be an article about the current election cycle.

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  2. "Empathy Tests" by danbuter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hopefully, by empathy tests, they don't mean torture one rat and see how the others react.

    1. Re:"Empathy Tests" by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Interesting

      There've been some milder studies vaguely like that in monkeys. In one such study, a monkey is given a cord that, if pulled, gives it some food. In the control group, that's all; in the experimental group, pulling the cord also shocks another monkey. They are much less willing to pull the "also shocks someone else" cord. That can be interpreted as a form of empathetic altruism, foregoing a reward to avoid harming someone else. A counter-argument is that it's not altruism so much as monkeys finding expressions of distress unpleasant, meaning they avoid pulling a cord that results in unpleasant sounds: a selfish behavior, because the real goal is to avoid hearing sounds they don't like. On the third hand, that counter-argument is hard to actually separate from "real" empathy, because one potential mechanism for (some kinds of) empathy is that we find it unpleasant to hear expressions of distress from others who are similar enough to us.

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      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    2. Re:"Empathy Tests" by codeAlDente · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Unfortunately yes. It's only been about half a century since there was active social debate in the US about whether people from other races were just dumb, mindless beasts.

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      He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
    3. Re:"Empathy Tests" by codeAlDente · · Score: 5, Informative

      1960 preceded the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In much of the south, blacks were considered the equivalent of beasts. The Catholic Church still abducted native Americans from their families and put them in Catholic schools, reasoning that their tribal culture did not meet the standards of rational thought. For a more academic viewpoint, check out the 1971 book The Pre-Columbian Mind, where a MD/historian Francisco Guerra weighs historical evidence to promote the viewpoint that people living in indigenous societies were indeed capable of rational thought. Or, maybe have a look into the Eugenics movement. http://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Weak-Eugenics-Americas/dp/0914153056/ref=sr_1_1 It's unwise to assume that the vast majority holds your intelligent, enlightened opinions.

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      He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
  3. Re:Unnecessarily complicated experiment by Guppy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Could have just given the rats the Voight-Kampff test.

    Yeah, they tried, but it didn't go too well.

    Researcher: "You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, . You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, but you’re not helping. Why is that?
    Rat: "Squeak?"

    Researcher: Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about your mother.
    Rat: "Squeeeeeeak!" *BITE*

  4. rats have empathy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    when you place an unconscious rat in a cage with conscious rats, the first thing they do is run over and eat the unconscious rats eyes out.

    i know this from first hand experience. watching it happen, while doing research as an undergrad. i was horrified. the postdoc looked over and was like "oh yeah, that's why we always separate them after giving them an injection to give them time to wake up. did i forget to tell you that part?"

    rats and other rodents also never act sick. ever. even if they have a broken leg or severe infection, they'll continue acting like normal rats, for fear (i assume?) that the second they show any kind of weakness, the other rats will gang up on them and eat them.