Two Humans and Some Rittens

Upworthy carried a story summarizing an experiment demonstrating that rats exhibit empathy. Why do I care about this? Because the graphics showing the experiment on Upworthy made me smile, and smiling is good. Here’s the link in case you want to watch the video embedded in the story.

Some scientists ran an experiment to demonstrate that. Here’s how it worked:

The scientists put a rat in water (which rats hate). Not enough to hurt the rat, but enough to annoy it.

Then they put another rat in a safer, dry area with a door it could open to save the first rat.

When the dry rat heard the damp, miserable rat get upset, she came to the rescue.

Still not satisfied with the result, the scientists ran a more complex test.

What if you bribe the dry rat with food? Will she ignore it to rescue the wet rat in the next chamber?

Scientists presumed it would be easier for the not-in-peril rat to take the obvious selfless route when it was given only one choice. But what if they gave her a delicious bribe (chocolate cereal) and then let her choose between saving her friend and a buffet?

The rats, by a significant margin, still usually saved their friend before getting their delicious bribe. What does that mean?

Rats might care more about each other than things like food, and that prioritization might be encoded in their DNA.

Why should we care about super-thoughtful rats?

It is often argued that humans are inherently selfish — that without guidance, we would all default to killing and stealing and an “every person for themselves” mentality. That we only help others if it helps us. That evolution can’t make us selfless; it’s something we have to force ourselves to do.

But if rats show human-like qualities (they laugh like us, they dream like us, they like to have selfless lovers) like altruism, that means it isn’t a human-learned behavior. It could be encoded in our DNA. It means humans could be empathetic and kind by default.

It also means that rats and humans have more in common than we think.

plantyhamchuk:

Luxury Oasis for Pet Rats / Critter Nation mod by /u/acroRATics

Wheatgrass is grown in the suspended container. When the rats finish digging up seeds and eating the grass, the love to construct burrows in the soil. The tubes are interchangeable, so when things need to be cleaned or move around, they can be adjusted. acroRATics is one part of a rat-loving couple, and they highly recommend supporting Central Texas Rat Rescue.

More photos here. Full discussion here.

Awesome rat tricks

Video

Upworthy carried a story summarizing an experiment demonstrating that rats exhibit empathy. Why do I care about this? Because the graphics showing the experiment on Upworthy made me smile, and smiling is good. Here’s the link in case you want to watch the video embedded in the story.

Some scientists ran an experiment to demonstrate that. Here’s how it worked:

The scientists put a rat in water (which rats hate). Not enough to hurt the rat, but enough to annoy it.

Then they put another rat in a safer, dry area with a door it could open to save the first rat.

When the dry rat heard the damp, miserable rat get upset, she came to the rescue.

Still not satisfied with the result, the scientists ran a more complex test.

What if you bribe the dry rat with food? Will she ignore it to rescue the wet rat in the next chamber?

Scientists presumed it would be easier for the not-in-peril rat to take the obvious selfless route when it was given only one choice. But what if they gave her a delicious bribe (chocolate cereal) and then let her choose between saving her friend and a buffet?

The rats, by a significant margin, still usually saved their friend before getting their delicious bribe. What does that mean?

Rats might care more about each other than things like food, and that prioritization might be encoded in their DNA.

Why should we care about super-thoughtful rats?

It is often argued that humans are inherently selfish — that without guidance, we would all default to killing and stealing and an “every person for themselves” mentality. That we only help others if it helps us. That evolution can’t make us selfless; it’s something we have to force ourselves to do.

But if rats show human-like qualities (they laugh like us, they dream like us, they like to have selfless lovers) like altruism, that means it isn’t a human-learned behavior. It could be encoded in our DNA. It means humans could be empathetic and kind by default.

It also means that rats and humans have more in common than we think.

I raised Roxy & Poison for about a year since they were wee lasses. My great friends KrisRix and Simon have been raising them wonderfully since that. Recently they’ve both come down with various health problems common in older rodents (they are about 2.5 years old)

Poison is especially suffering from breathing problems, and hearing her little gasping breaths at the vet today was awful. But we got some new medicine that they both will respond to. But its gonna be touch and go for a few days.

I don’t know about anybody else, but when the vet said Poison had a 50% chance of responding to the medicine, even though her back legs are lame, and her gasping was terrible and to me, she just didn’t seem very fit for the world anymore, we decided on the hopeful half, because Roxy seemed unwilling to let her go, gripping her fur and trying to protect her.

Our dear Roxy is now with our other rats in Valhalla.