Rodents exhibit empathy by setting trapped friends free

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/336819/title/He%E2%80%99s_no_rat%2C_he%E2%80%99s_my_brother

by dclaysmith • 15 years ago

64 46 15 years ago

themgt• 15 years ago

Alternate title: Study finds humans selectively block their empathy towards some fellow mammals

tzs3• 15 years ago

That doesn't necessarily show empathy. In a dangerous environment, for instance, it can be better to have others around to lessen your individual risk. It could be freeing the trapped rat in the hope that when the big nasty humans come back they will pick the other rat.

finnw3• 15 years ago

Wouldn't your individual risk be lessened by leaving the other rat trapped, so that it is easy prey and more likely to get picked?

tzs3• 15 years ago

Maybe. On the other hand, the trapped rat might be safer as a predator might not be able to get into the cage.

There are plenty of possible ways things could work out. For instance, if the rats have figured out that the humans can identify individual rats and treat them different (which they might figure out if the humans have done several kinds of experiments on the same rats because each experiment would have a control group that gets different treatment), the rat outside might think "the humans but this other rat in the cage--if I let it out, then when they come back they'll be distracted putting it back in, and might leave me alone".

Or maybe it would be good to let the other rat out so that if danger arrives, you can go hide in the cage.

Or it could make sense to have the other rat out so that the two of you can more quickly explore the environment and find a way to escape.

The main point is that you can't really attribute letting the other rat out to empathy, as there are many other possible explanations for why a rat might let another rat out.

rcthompson2• 15 years ago

Only if the free rat plans to stick around the trapped one. If the free rat wants to go anywhere and still have safety in numbers, he has to free the trapped one.

tikhonj• 15 years ago

I don't see why empathy and pragmatism have to be mutually exclusive. You can think of empathy as a heuristic for choosing an optimal action: in a lot of cases, one way or another, helping out a fellow rat is beneficial, so empathy is an advantage. Especially as a rat, you don't have the capacity or time to use a significantly more accurate method to choose an action anyhow.

tzs3• 15 years ago

They aren't mutually exclusive, but you can't infer one from behavior unless you eliminate the other as a possible explanation.

Dn_Ab• 15 years ago

I think the rats are intelligent or desensitized enough to have learned that the humans are no threat. But it could be something similarly simple. Like an advantage to helping those as a function of distance measured by genetic similarity, when in a foreign environment. Especially as social animals, strength in numbers type thing. So those who helped each other tended to survive to pass on those genes. Still selfish but emerges as empathetic looking. I too think empathy presumes a far higher intentionality and model of the self for the rat.

But their actions should still count as a precursor to empathy. I believe these things are a continuum and divisions along the way are pretty arbitrary. For example does a parrot talk or is it just pattern recognizing? To that I say, what is the difference? Can we say talking is more than simply pattern recognition recursed to the next level?

Consider Searle's Chinese Room, where he argues that since a human following a program to translate Chinese does not understand Chinese then a machine running the same also does not understand and hence is not 'strong AI'. I do not agree with his conclusion as I find such a distinction to be meaningless. You can't define what a mind is, human or not, by whether its aware of its operations. That is too slippery a concept and not necessarily an advantage. You can only observe and enumerate what properties the mind does (not) exhibit.

Read Peter Watts' Blindsight if you want to see this line of thinking handled incredibly well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(science_fiction_nov...

lusr3• 15 years ago

I suspect that this sort of behaviour is indeed a precursor to empathy. I think the debate would be greatly improved if all parties could agree on a definition of "empathy", and then identify whether the experimental design justifies a conclusion regarding empathy, as defined. (As an aside, my problem with Searle's Chinese Room is that Searle never explains how he believes the human mind "understands" and a machine does not. How can you compare the human mind with a machine if you can't define it in comparative terms?)

stewbrew3• 15 years ago

Given their mathematical and statistical skills, somebody will soon start hiring rats as financial consultants.

Do you really think this is the simpler explanation?

lusr3• 15 years ago

I'm not sure if you are aware of this or not: www.artmarcovici.com/rat-traders

Also, I believe it's implicit in parent's post that evolution would produce more rats whose behaviour increases their likelihood of survival. The rats don't need to understand how their behaviour ensures their survival, or that it can be modelled with game theory, etc.

moocow01• 15 years ago

The easier way to determine if humans are the only species who have empathy...

Talk to any dog owner.

tnuc• 15 years ago

Are you saying cats have no empathy?

finnw3• 15 years ago

All that will tell you is that humans will anthropomorphize anything.

I would agree with the dog owner, but then you sometimes hear owners of non-social animals (e.g. snakes, octopuses) claiming their pets have empathy. A few people even claim their cars have empathy.

ComputerGuru• 15 years ago

My car loves me. I'm serious, it's like it knows that I take really good care of it and try not to overwork it when I can. You should see how it responds to my touch far better than any one else's when I'm driving it in the mountains or in inclement conditions.

I can tell when it's happy because it's purring, and when it's working too hard it groans and squeals instead. It lets me know when its hungry (oil change indicator), thirsty (windshield wiper indicator), sick (service needed indicator), or just plain out of breath (low tire pressure indicator).

I don't understand how some people can be so cruel and say that it can't think and feel for itself. They think just because a human built the machine that built this car, that they're automatically superior to it. They just won't take the time to listen.

I used to be like that, but one time... I killed a car. It was by accident and I really didn't mean to do it, but the sounds it was making when it was dying; oh god, the sounds. You would know cars can feel and understand if you heard them.

zeroboy• 15 years ago

My question is: why don't we show more empathy towards animals? The experimentations and vivisections, urban sprawl and deforestation, the abandonment of pets when they become inconvenient - we as humans don't consider the cruelty of our actions.

We figure as long as it can be profited from or paved over, it's justifiable. It's not.

One day mankind will grieve because of the suffering we have caused animals. But by then it will be too late.

mattgreenrocks• 15 years ago

The same cognitive dissonance arises when talking about collateral damage of capitalism: "well, that sucks, but capitalism is good, so it's not responsible for those effects."

Empathy is the antithesis of power. That's why it will always be the exception in humans.

finnw3• 15 years ago

> The same cognitive dissonance arises when talking about collateral damage of capitalism: "well, that sucks, but capitalism is good, so it's not responsible for those effects."

Are you referring to the Halo Effect? (http://lesswrong.com/lw/lj/the_halo_effect/)

Edit: I don't think I meant the Halo Effect - there was another kind of bias I read about on lesswrong.com, but I cannot find it.

Volpe• 15 years ago

We do all of those things to Humans too, it's not that we don't show empathy to animals, we don't show it to anything.

Rat 1, Human 0 ?

thret• 15 years ago

Why do we show any empathy towards animals? You can't kill and eat something you empathise with. Empathy towards humans makes sense but I don't see the evolutionary advantage of treasuring all life.

That said, I can't even kill spiders. It doesn't make any sense but I've an unavoidable feeling of guilt if I don't release them outside unharmed. Yet I have no problem eating meat. My empathy is irrational.

icebraining• 15 years ago

"When one man dies it is a tragedy, when thousands die it's statistics." - Stalin (not confirmed).

Empathy is irrational, since it relies on identification with the other being. It's always easier to identify oneself with a living being than to a piece of meat.

On the other hand, it's also very rational; it's a much better strategy than if it was guided by pure knowledge, since it optimizes cooperation: otherwise, you'd either be completely indifferent to someone you can actually help (e.g. injured person near you) or live in mental anguish by the fact that you know that thousands are constantly being killed by wars, curable diseases, etc.

brmj• 15 years ago

I take issue with the viewpoint that behavior is best understood by treating all involved minds as if they were perfect Bayesian reasoners motivated only by increasing the frequency of their alleles in the gene pool. Evolution doesn't work like that. Evolved minds are just a pile of kludges that were good enough.

Instead of the way you've been thinking about this, suppose instead that empathy is a straightforward consequence of mirror neurons, which essentially try to model the mental state of others based on their behavior. That might be most useful when dealing with the others in the ancestral social group, but it might also be useful to figure out that that bear over there is probably just protecting her cub, while the tiger last week was probably just hungry, for example. Of course, it would have to be possible to override empathy fairly easily, even in the context of one's own social group, but in the absence of any particular reason to do so empathy might in large part guide one's behavior. Stick people in an environment where food comes from the store, nothing wants to kill and eat you and the animals you encounter most are domesticated or mostly acclimated to humans and one can see how empathy might be applied to all kinds of things it wouldn't be under other circumstances.

This is just a half-baked hypothesis by an amateur, but you get the idea. Brains end up just being good enough, not optimal. If anything, it's a wonder that ours aren't even worse than they are at general purpose computation.

philh• 15 years ago

Because an "empathy-towards-animals" gene would not improve reproductive success. And although we are capable of transcending our genes, it's not something we do by default.

ars• 15 years ago

> My question is: why don't we show more empathy towards animals?

Because animals are not humans, and trying to raise animals to the level of humans does not do that - rather it lowers humans to the level of animals.

As much as you have compassion for animals don't confuse them with humans.

duck2• 15 years ago

I set a mouse trap yesterday morning and last night went to check on it. The mouse that was caught in it was pretty much gone from being eaten by another mouse (which I'm guessing is the one that I caught this morning). I guess nobody told them about this study.

burgerbrain• 15 years ago

Mice are pretty much just herbivores. I think you might something other than just mice to worry about...

dimitar2• 15 years ago

I think he meant that the mouse was eaten by a rat. Rats are much bigger and hunt, kill and eat the similar but smaller mice.

In fact there is a term for it: muricide.

Rats also practice infanticide.

So, yeah rodent morality is also complex.

wooster• 15 years ago

A brief bit of Googling suggests mice commonly eat other dead mice.

orthecreedence• 15 years ago

My god, other animals besides us have the capacity for empathy. I thought humans were the only creatures in the universe that had the potential for emotion or intelligence. Mind blowing.

dimitar2• 15 years ago

Very interesting page on rat social behavior: http://www.ratbehavior.org/norway_rat_ethogram.htm#SocialBeh...

anateus2• 15 years ago

I understand "empathy" to mean the ability to feel someone's emotions/pain/etc. What this demonstrates is that rats will go to another rat's aid, and nothing about their internal models for doing so.

It is oversimplifying to say something like "oh it's helping the other rat for selfish reason X", but it is equally misleading to apply human models of mind, which we have due to our unique ability to introspect and share that introspection with other members of our species.

Models such as kin selection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection) attempt to explain altruism within an evolutionary model, but even if there is a totally different cause for this particular altruistic behavior (and even if it is shown to be almost wholly altruistic, rather than just indirectly self-beneficial, assuming such a distinction exists), there are very few grounds to assume empathy.

The most interesting result to me is that the rats demonstrate distress at seeing the suffering, and cease upon release. But before talking about empathy again, we must show that the distress is its own separate thing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voight-Kampff_test#Voight-Kampf...) rather than mere frustration at failed attempts of rescue.

So, sure, we've learned something, but I don't think we've demonstrated empathy.

teyc2• 15 years ago

There was a time when explorers observed a primitive tribe exhibiting empathy or even morality might exert the same kind of hand-wringing as you did about whether it is actually so.

bpd1069• 15 years ago

Same thing happened with chimps and the discovery of tool use. Jane Goodall was met by the same resistance. It is a characteristic, I would assume of the social organism as a whole. We have a lot in common with our little burrowing social friends. Empathy being one of them.

Altruism is also indicated by leaving the sweets for the trapped rat.

Im not a neuroscientist, but I can guess the mirror neurons are at play.

stewbrew3• 15 years ago

"What this demonstrates is that rats will go to another rat's aid, and nothing about their internal models for doing so."

The notion of aid implies it has a mental model of the other rat and that it consideres the other rat as a rat that needs help.

I don't understand why people always think of humans as outstanding and totally different from other species. Or do you think that humans are only exhibiting kin selection too and that empathy is nothing but a ideological concept? How do you prove empathy in humans? (And please apply the same rigor.)

anateus2• 15 years ago

I do mention that humans are capable of sharing their introspections with each other. There are a lot of issues with this, and philosophy is busy figuring that stuff out (from qualia on). This is why I choose to accept the common explanation that empathy plays at least some role in human altruism.

I think we should be just as careful ascribing internal models to human actions that we observe, where we might be even more tempted to jump to conclusions because we think we must be familiar what goes on in other humans' minds.

So, to summarize, I think humans really do feel empathy (I know I do, and I choose to believe others do too), and I know humans will often engage in altruistic behavior. I'm not certain that without empathy we wouldn't engage in the altruistic behavior, though it's likely we'd engage in less. So yes, I do actively apply the same rigor to this area where ethics, philosophy of mind, and neuroscience are meeting. It's a fascinating topic! But it's an area that's easily politicized (morality takeaways tend to be applied quickly...) so I always err on the side of careful interpretation.

logn• 15 years ago

maybe less empathy and more, hey you can help me

MichaelApproved• 15 years ago

Video showing the rodents in action http://www.newsy.com/mobile/video/study-rats-show-each-other...

ajays• 15 years ago

I am continuously amused by how humans get in a huff when people anthropmorphize animals' actions... "surely it can't be empathy!" ... "we don't know if the rat is _really_ feeling the trapped rat's pain!!"

The question is: why not? Who are we to say that rats (or dogs or cats or crows or elephants or . . . ) can't feel another's pain?

Dogs have been known to show emotion. Elephants have been known to show emotion. Chimp mothers express sorrow when their child dies. And so on.

But people will come up with contorted explanations for these phenomena: dogs must 'smell' some pheromone that triggers such behavior... chimp mothers are only grieving because it's loss of a valuable tribe resource ... or things to those effect.

You know what? Believe what you will. But I have seen more empathy coming from animals than some humans (see Dick Cheney).

webnrrd2k• 15 years ago

I agree. Animals feeling emotions is one of those things that I believe, but can't prove. It just strikes me as another version of the "humans are the center of the univese" theory. Also, it's hard for me to believe that nature hasn't come up with emotions before humans evolved. I'm not saying I understand it very well, but the major brain structures responsible for emotion go back fairly far along the evolutionary tree.

Lastly, I just have trouble believing that what I see with my own eyes isn't emotion.

Rodents exhibit empathy by setting trapped friends free

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