December 2011
3 posts
Helping a Cagemate in Need: Empathy and Pro-Social... →
“Rats can experience “emotional contagion”: when one rat is distressed, another acts the same way. But can a rat show a more nuanced form of empathy in which it acts to alleviate the suffering of another? To find out, Bartal et al. tested whether rats would rescue a trapped cagemate, without any obvious reward. The group found that rats would release trapped cagemates from restrainers, but...