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RAT EMPATHY AND PRO-SOCIAL BEHAVIOR
- 1. EMPATHY AND PRO-SOCIAL BEHAVIOR IN RATS Emma Glanzer
- 3. Empathy empathy noun 1. The intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. 2. The ability to understand and share the feelings of another. 3. A multilayered phenomenon that starts with automatic state matching based on motor mimicry and shared neural representations, to which cognitive perspective taking is secondary.
- 4. Russian Doll Model of Empathy de Waal, F. B. M., “The Antiquity of Empathy”. Science. 336 (2012).
- 5. Pro-sociality and Empathy Empathy: The capacity to recognize and share feelings experienced by another individual. Pro-sociality: The tendency to behave so as to benefit another individual.
- 6. Hypotheses Pro-social rescue behavior in rats is not motivated by empathic feeling. Pro-social rescue behavior in rats is motivated by empathic feeling. H0 HA
- 7. Bartal, I.B., Decety, J., and Mason, P. “Empathy and Pro-social Behavior in Rats”. Science. 334 (2011): 1427-1430. Impact Factor: 31.03 Study I
- 8. Study I Hypotheses Rats are not capable of empathically motivated helping behavior. Rats are capable of empathically motivated helping behavior. H0 HA
- 9. Materials and Methods: Subjects Sprague-Dawley 3-6 months old 46 male, 12 female Housed in pairs Tails marked for identification
- 10. Materials and Methods: Set-up 50x50 cm plexiglass arena 25x8.75 cm restrainer Top-mounted video camera to record movement Heterodyne recorder to detect vocalizations Harvard Apparatus rodent restrainer.
- 11. Materials and Methods: Conditions Trapped: n = 30 Empty: n = 20 Object: n = 8 2+ Empty: n = 12
- 12. Pre-trial Procedures Habituation Housed in pairs 2 weeks Handled 4 days pre- experiment Placed in arena 1 hour Returned to home cage Free-rat Determination Measure of boldness Time-to-edge latency Interesting effect between latencies of openers and non- openers
- 14. Experimental Procedure 1. Trapped rat placed in restrainer 2. Free rat marked and placed in arena 3. Start sessions 90 minutes (reduce to 60) 4. Record video and audio 5. Rats remained in arena for duration of session 6. Repeated one session/day for 12 days.
- 16. Two Problems Free rats didn’t open restrainer Investigator opened door halfway Did not count as door-opening Trapped rat opened door from inside Plastic blocker inserted, used for remainder of sessions Removed if free rat opened door
- 17. Alarm calls greater for trapped condition. Trapped rats were experiencing stress. RESULTS: Alarm Calls
- 18. Free rats in trapped condition more active in second half of sessions. RESULTS: Activity Ratio
- 19. Latency to door-opening shortest for rats in trapped condition. Proportion of trapped-condition rats opening door increased. RESULTS: Door-opening
- 20. Freezing time after door-opening decreased across sessions. RESULTS: Freezing Time
- 21. Females opened door at shorter latencies. Females more active in trapped condition. More female rats became openers than male rats. RESULTS: Sex Differences
- 22. Free rats in trapped condition spent more time at arena center. RESULTS: Movement Distribution
- 23. Results Trapped rat was in distress Free rats worked to alleviate stress Opened door at greater frequencies Opened door at shorter latencies Increased activity until door was opened Action was deliberate Sex differences
- 24. Experiment II To determine whether “anticipation of social interaction is necessary to motivate door- opening”. 9 pairs of rats that were openers Modified set up Two arenas joined by restrainer Trapped rat could only egress into separate arena Two conditions Separated Empty Separated Cagemate One session/day for 29 and 27 days
- 26. Rats stopped opening the door of the empty restrainer. RESULTS: Door-opening
- 27. Rats stopped opening the door of the empty restrainer. RESULTS: Door-opening
- 28. Experiment III To examine the relative value of liberating a trapped cagemate. New set of rats, same strain and age Modified set up One arena with two restrainers Two conditions Chocolate Empty Chocolate Cagemate One session/day for 12 days
- 30. Chocolate-containing restrainer opened more quickly than empty restrainer. RESULTS: Door-opening Latencies
- 31. No difference in door-opening latencies for chocolate- and cagemate-containing restrainers. RESULTS: Door-opening Latencies
- 32. Discussion Desire for social contact Free rats liberated cagemate even when contact was prevented Stop alarm calls Alarm calls occurred too infrequently Curiosity Curiosity extinguishes within trial time frame Coincidence with activity levels Door-opening was hard, could not occur accidentally
- 33. Study I Hypotheses Rats are not capable of empathically motivated helping behavior. Rats are capable of empathically motivated helping behavior. H0 HA
- 34. Critique Experiment conducted during rat’s light cycle Opening door halfway No data tables Poorly explained procedures
- 36. Silberberg, A., Allouch, C., Sandfort, S., Kearns, D., Karpel, H., and Slotnick, B. “Desire for social contact, not empathy, may explain rescue behavior in rats”. Animal Cognition. (2013). Impact Factor: 2.71 Study II
- 37. Study II Hypotheses Pro-social behaviors are motivated by social contact, as free rats will not learn to liberate a trapped rat when absence of social contact is the outcome of Pro-social behaviors are not motivated by social contact, as free rats will learn to liberate a trapped rat when absence of social contact is the outcome of behaviors. H0 HA
- 38. Materials and Methods: Subjects Sprague-Dawley 3-6 months old 12 females, 6 pairs Housed in pairs Habituated as in Study I
- 39. Materials and Methods: Set-up Two plastic arenas 41x58 cm each Joined by restrainer 25x8.75 cm restrainer Doors recessed 2.1 cm Opened by rat contact with metal strip sensor on free rat’s side
- 40. Materials and Methods: Conditions All 12 rats participated in each condition sequentially Condition 1 Free rat contact opens distal door 30 minute sessions, 15 sessions Condition 2 Free rat contact opens near door, permitting social contact 30 minute sessions, 15 sessions Condition 3 Free rat contact opens distal door 30 minute sessions, 27 sessions
- 41. Experimental Procedure 1. Trapped rat placed in restrainer 2. Free rat placed in arena 3. Session duration 30 minutes 4. Investigators observe rat behavior 5. Repeated one session/day for 15 days, then move to next condition 6. End with 27 sessions of Condition 3
- 42. Latencies increased across Condition 1. Latencies decreased between Conditions 1 and 2. RESULTS: Door-opening Latencies
- 43. Response rate decreased across Condition 1. Response rate increased between Conditions 1 and 3. RESULTS: Door-opening Frequencies
- 44. Experiment II To determine if frequent door-sensor contacts are due to free rat’s motivation to be near cagemate. Same subjects and materials Continue Condition 3 for 1 session Quantify: Return time in restrainer Free rat contact with restrainer Introduce Condition 4 Fifteen 30-minute sessions No action by free rat will release trapped rat
- 45. 3 of 6 free rats spend majority of time in contact with restrainer. 4 of 6 trapped rats spend majority of time after door opening in restrainer. RESULTS: Video Scores
- 46. No decrease in response rate. RESULTS: Latency and Frequency
- 47. RESULTS: Experiments I and II Result Empathy Social Contact Condition 1: Latencies increased and frequencies decreased ✓ Condition 2: Latencies decreased across sessions ✓ ✓ Condition 3: Response latency remained short ✓ Condition 3: Response frequency remained high ✓ Condition 4: Free rat responses did not decrease ✓
- 48. Discussion Difference in trapped rat behavior between Conditions 1 and 2 Free rat’s responses are not outcome- dependent.
- 49. Study II Hypotheses Pro-social behaviors are motivated by social contact, as free rats will not learn to liberate a trapped rat when absence of social contact is the outcome of Pro-social behaviors are not motivated by social contact, as free rats will learn to liberate a trapped rat even when absence of social contact is the outcome of H0 HA
- 50. Critique Graphs hard to interpret No frequency data for Condition 2 Video scoring Snout contacts not counted Trapped rat position not scored when free rat was on top of restrainer Poor analysis Poor design for opening mechanism Analysis of Condition 4
- 51. Is pro-social behavior in rats motivated by empathy?
- 52. Hypotheses Pro-social rescue behavior in rats is not motivated by empathic feeling. Pro-social rescue behavior in rats is motivated by empathic feeling. H0 HA
Notes de l'éditeur
- I decided to start with this picture for several reasons. First, it’s a pretty weird picture, and if this doesn’t get your attention I don’t know what will. But first I want to explain where I got this photo. If you do a google image search for rat empathy, looking for experiment set ups, this is the 20th result. Which in an image search is not bad, Its right on the front page. Empathy is often considered a uniquely human quality. If you consider the golden rule, where the ability to put yourself in someone else’s position can help you decide how to behave, it is often associated with ethical behavior and morality. If you’re so inclined to believe that humans draw morality from religion, findings that other animals that clearly don’t practice religion are capable of empathy and subsequent actions on it, it could be a little paradigm shattering. On the other hand, if you arent And even if you aren’t religious, finding that other animals have the capacity for empathy, and the ability to act on it, has profound implications for cognitive psychology and even philosophy and ethics. It shows that there is an evolutionary, biological, basis for empathic feelings and concerns about other’s welfare. If we can determine what animals express it and what don’t, we can get closer to understanding the evolutionary emergence of empathy.
- So what is empathy? Read definitions. Empathy, for a simple example, is responsible for the feeling you get when you see someone else get hurt and you flinch. The first definition suggest that one must be capable of metacognition, the ability to think about ones own thoughts, to be capable of empathy. So you see it happen and think, yeah, that would hurt. Though it helps when you can think about it, it works before you know it. Your brain is mimicing the neural processes that are happening in that person jus Unconscious empathy is demonstrated when human study participants mimic observed facial expressions and report corresponding emotions even though the expressions were presented too breifly for for conscious perception. That thinking about it, putting yourself in someone elses shoes, is called cognitive perspective taking. Cognitive-perspective taking is secondary to the roots of empathy, which starts with atuomatic state matching based on motor mimicry and shared neural representations.
- PAM – stands for perception-action mechanism, which I take to mean whatever sensory cues it takes to communicate the feeling of the donor. It might be an olfactory cue, sight, or in the case of rodents where sight isnt’ that good, it could be touch of whiskers used to determine facial expression. (pain is communicated in mice this way) So the perception action mechanism leads to emotional contagion, which, to put a very simple example, is like one baby cries all the babies cry. Seeing something happen, or someone react, basically the PAM, causes motor mimicry and shared neural representations in the recipient. The evolutionary basis for this is to rapidly spread alarm through a group to coordinate travel and communicate about danger. Another interesting instance of emotional contagion is yawning. Chimps and humans yawn (maybe even dogs and rats do) when they see other chimps or humans yawn. Theres also studies that show that this may be restricted to kin, or in-groups, where chimps only yawn when they see kin do it, not members of out-group There already a building body of evidence for emotional contagion in rodents. That’s the innermost doll. What we want to know is how much whole representation of this do rats have? Does the rodent model of empathy include the outermost doll, where empathy motivates “targeted helping”, pro-social helping behavior?
- In the second study, the authors cite Marco Vasconcelos opinion piece in Biology letters entitled Pro-sociality without empathy. In that piece he has two great working definitons for empathy and pro sociality. Prosocial behaviors are well documented, “widespread and uncontroversial phenomenon” in the animal kingdom, even down to ants. What we want to know is what role an empathic mind state plays in motivating pro-social behavior. Knowing in what species, and to what extent, empathy is present and motivates behavior, can help us learn about the evolutionary emergence of empathy, which will have impacts in behavioral and cognitive psychology, and even ethics and philosophy.
- I am going to critically evaluate two studies, both of which place rat pairs in a situation where one is trapped and the other is capable of freeing the first, yet come to different conclusions about the motivation for the helping behavior. At the end of the analysis, ill be able to accept, or fail to reject, one of these hypotheses.
- Determine this by whether or not they help, and in what condiitons
- Sprague-dawley are albino rats. Main advantage over other strains is calmness and ease of handling. There are many other strains with varied purposes, Zucker rats as models for obesity, hairless rats that have immune dysfunction, Biobreeding rat that develops diabetes, etc. Kind of cool Sprague Dawley strain developed at SD company in Madison in 1925 Rats become sexually mature around 5 weeks, “socially” mature around 5 months
- Restrainer has several holes and slits that allow for breathing, smell and tactile communication between rats. Top mounted camera and video analysis software to measure speed of free rat movements and placement in the arena Heterodyne detector measured vocalizaitons in the ~23 kHz range. Same type of instrument used to detect bats. Lowers ultrasounds to a frequency we can hear. Rats vocalize in range humans can hear (2-20 kHz), and above. 22-25 for agonistic encounters. 22 is considered threshold for “alarm calls” ~50 is associated with positive affect, ~ 22 negative emotional state (presence of predators, footshocks, social defeat, aversive drugs, touch by unfamiliar human)
- All arenas are the same size. Trapped: one rat free, one rat in restrainer Empty: one rat free in the arena, empty (closed) restrainer Object: one rat free, stuffed animal (white) in restrainer 2+ Empty: one rat free in divided arena with empty restrainer, one other rat in arena but across divide
- Habituation: performance in this set-up is very sensitive to stress. If they are stressed they could emit alarm calls not due to restrainer. Same sex, same age pairs. Handled, by investigators, though didn’t say how. 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes on days 1, 2, 3, and 4 before experiment Placed in arena together. Doors were open or removed on restrainer Free rat determination: Reduce variance due to hierarchical position of rats within the pair. Time to edge latency – time it took for a rat to come to edge of the cage, rear up, and place paws on ledge after lid is lifted. Measurement taken on first three days of habituation. Shortest latency rat of a pair was chosen to be the free rat Interesting to note – latencies were shorter for both rats in cages that were later classified as openers than non-openers. No statistical analysis
- What the rats do. Supposedly at this time trapped rat is experiencing distress and may be making alarm calls. Free rat runs around sniffing, biting, investigating. Talk about size of arena, weights on door, black dot on head. Took rats an average of 6.9 +- 2.9 days to open the door. (Avg 7)
- Two problems occurred Rats opening from inside – plastic blocker inserted. Used for remainder of sessions. 2 rat pairs were removed from the study because they figured out how to open the door before blocker was employed Free rat not opening at all – investigator opened door halfway. How does this affect the trapped rat’s feelings? Would the free rat figure it out eventually? Yes, some did, but still. Didn’t count as opening. That means the free rat may have been liberated before day
- First need to establish that rats were in distress. Calls occurred more frequently on days 1-3 when door-opening was rare. What time did they make these vocalizations? After door was opened? Before? Not a lot of vocalizations, in general.
- Before learning to open the door. This could show that rats are motivated to move to figure out how to open the door. Or are just stimulated by other rats alarm calls/distress. Interesting that activity didn’t increase after opening By 12th day, were opening restrainer within minutes of the start of the session.
- At the end of the experiment, 23/30 rats in trapped condition opened the door, only 5/40 in control opened it GRAPH b – 5 is missing on the 50
- Shows that rats were no longer startled by door falling. The door falling was the “expected outcome of a deliberate, goal-directed action”
- Use testing day 7-12 because that’s how long it took them to open the door. Shorter latency significant with p value .01 6/6 female rats opened the door, 17/24 male rats opened the door total. (significant with p value .05) Female rats are generally more active. Among rat owners, female rats are thought to be more “hyper”. However, its interesting that this activity difference is only seen in the trapped condition. (significant with p-value .001 ANOVA) This is interpreted to be consistent with suggestions that females are more empathic than males. (This can be seen in humans where females can read expressions better and hear inflections in voice that males cant. Better able to predict how a person is feeling)
- These graphs were nearly glossed over in the paper. I included them to show the movements of rats throughout conditions, and to illustrate specifically the 2+ empty condition, which didn’t come into play in any of the other analyses. To be honest I’m not sure what they thought it was going to show. B is locations of rats every 2 seconds during the first session.
- This does not necessarily show that rats display empathy. What if they just wanted to be with their cagemate? To play with?
- Didn’t say how free rat could open the door. Obviously he pushed it over in the first experiment, but that means the trapped rat gets to come out where he pushed the door over. Didn’t say how they split up the 9 rat pairs. Didn’t say if 9 rats were the same as in Ex 1. Don’t think so. Took 12 pairs, tested them 12 days, took the 9 pairs that became openers
- P value .001 Each bar represents median results of 3 testing days. This graph includes results from the first experiment (maybe) It looks like the first section before the dotted line is the first experiment. But that can’t be, because rat’s didn’t learn to open the door until day 7. Did they repeat it? Three pairs were not included, so that accounts for the differences in rat numbers if they did use the same 30 rats that were in the trapped condition in Ex. 1 What to notice though, the y axis on this graph is in minutes. Sessions were 60 minutes long, so bars that reach to the top indicate that in those three testing days none of the rats opened the door at all. Notice that they returned to short door-opening latencies when there was a cagemate in the separated condition. No social contact necessary to motivate door-opening behavior This is the most compelling part of the experiment I think
- P value .001 Here we lost the y axis, but it is again the median latency of door-opening in minutes. Notice that latencies stayed low in the cagemate condition. The only difference between the first and second sections here is that in the second section the trapped rat, when released by the free rat, could only exit into a separate arena. There was no social contact possible. For the last 9 days, the door wasn’t opened at all in the empty condition. But, they rats opened the door for 18 days before that. Why?
- Rats like chocolate a lot. This is obvious to anyone who’s ever had a pet rat, but they tested the theory anyway. When given a choice between rat chow at chocolate chips, non food deprived rats ate an average of >7 nestle toll house chocolate chips and no rat chow. (How many chocolate chips were there? If there were only 7 they ate them all. If there were more than 7, that’s still kind of a lot for a rat. Didn’t say how many rats, or which rats. That it took them an average of 6 days to learn to open the doors it makes me think that they used a new set of subjects.
- Y axis is latency to door-opening as percent of session time. (don’t know why they would do percent session time unless they had variable session times. Rats opened chocolate containing one quicker (p value .01) Took rats 5.8 +- 2.1 days to learn to open the door. That’s like one day sooner than other trapped rats. Difference? Ate almost all the chips (4.8 +- 0.7)
- No p value. I was confused about the “no difference” part of that. One has to be opened before the other. And looking at the graph the chocolate chip container actually was opened slightly before in 5/6 days after day 6 Shows that value of liberating a trapped cagemate is on par with accessing chocolate chips. Shared chips in 61% of trials on day 6-12, 52% for the whole trial. Free rats only ate 3.5 +- 1.5 chips, leaving 1.5 +- 1.4 chips for the trapped rat. That they shared the chips is really interesting. My rat lives by himself, hes got no one to compete with, and he is greedy! Looks like door was opened halfway again. Was it opened for both restrainers?
- Here, this study is in response to Inbal Bartal’s. They are concerned that novel methods may lead to misinterpretation of experimental results so they in this study, are attempting to reproduce the targeted effect in a different way. This is called systematic replication. They think that these empathic behaviors of opening the door are due to a desire for social contact, not actual empathy. The question is not whether the behavior will extinguish in the absence of social contact, but whether it will develop at all when no social contact is the first conditon of the experiment.
- Because the motivation is different. Goes to show that the motivation for rescue behavior is not empathy, its anticipation of social contact
- Sprague-dawley are albino rats. Main advantage over other strains is calmness and ease of handling. There are many other strains with varied purposes, Zucker rats as models for obesity, hairless rats that have immune dysfunction, Biobreeding rat that develops diabetes, etc. Kind of cool Sprague Dawley strain developed at SD company in Madison in 1925 Rats become sexually mature around 5 weeks, “socially” mature around 5 months
- Doors opened by computer controlled motors.
- Used 27 sessions to match the number in Inbal Bartal’s extinction test.
- Latency to door-opening across the three conditions. Each bar represents 3 sessions (outcomes of 18 rat trials) Y axis is a log scale of the latency in seconds it took the rats to open the door. The line in the middle of the bars is the median, the ends of the bars define the interquartile range. 50 percent of latencies found are within this range. Some must have taken way longer or way shorter. Variation reduces across 2nd and 3rd conditions, maybe because rats were still learning in C1 Latencies increased across condition 1 (p value .03) Latencies significantly reduced from C1 to C2 (p. value .03) Would have liked to see how much it would decrease if condition 2 extended. Latencies indistinguishable from C2 and C3. Why aren’t they different? DO NOT ADDRESS THIS! Latencies stay lower. Do not extinguish response in absence of contact Were responses intentional? Latency to response increased when it caused greater distance between free and trapped rats. Latency decreased when it decreased distance between the rats. They were quicker to open the door when it meant the trapped rat would join it. Slower when it meant the trapped rat would be farther away. These changes are outcome-dependent and are a “hallmark of operant behavior and willful action”
- This graph records then number of free-rat front door contacts. Remember that only the first “response” opens the door. No data for C2 because when the front door was lifted (in other sessions the back door was lifted) the sensor went with it. It was out of reach of the rats. They take this to mean that in condition 3, but not 1, free rats responded to front door with higher frequencies even though the trapped rat was already released from restraining tube. Observed that in C3 trapped rats often returned to the restraining tube after they had been released. Could account for why the free rat was “responding” to the door so much. He was just trying to be nearer to the trapped rat that re-entered the restrainer.
- Videorecord only the extra session of C3. In this condition, the free rat is in his arena and can release the trapped rat into a distal chamber by touching the metal strip above the door with her nose. Video record to determine how often trapped rats returned to the restrainer and how long they stayed there. And how often and for how long free rats were in contact with the restrainer. Videos scored by investigators (didn’t say if blinded or not) After
- For restrained rats – that’s just the time they spent in the tube AFTER the door had been opened. Number of contacts and number of entrances for free and trapped rats respectively only count as different contacts if there was 1 second elapse between them. Otherwise they were counted as one contact and only duration increased. Free rat snout contacts with tube were not recorded because it was often ambiguous whether it was close or actually in contact Trapped rat location was not scored if free rat was sitting on top of the tube. What is interesting here is rat pairs 1, 3, 4, and 5. Note that free rats (1 and 5) that spent a long time (the most time) in contact with the restraining tube, trapped rat spent very little time there (almost the least) Vice Verse too.
- Dashed line is the median response for the final three-block sessions from Condition 3, experiment 1. No decrease is seen, which supports the social contact theory. If rats were motivated by empathy, you would expect to see their responses diminish when their responses cause no effect. But, responses do not decrease. That is what you would expect if responses occurred as a consequence of proximity because rats were motivated by social contact. I think this calls into question all frequency data for responses. How easy was it for them to touch the sensor only by proximity? How much does frequency data matter anyway if it only opens the door one time, and the door never shuts? Is it hard for rats to learn that?
- Condition 1: Trapped rat was released into a distal chamber. Across sessions, the time it took free rats to open the door increased and the number of contacts they had with the sensor decreased. If they were motivated by social contact, free rats may have been deterred from responding because doing so increased distance between them. Condition 2: Trapped rat was released into the same chamber as the free rat. This is compatible with both an empathic and a social-contact motivation for behavior (no frequency data) Condition 3: Trapped rat was again released into the distal chamber. As would not be expected with a social contact hypothesis, response latency remained short, as short as in C2. If it were social contact, you would expect that to increase. Since it did not, empathy may have been the motivator However, since response frequency remained high, and trapped rats were seen to return to the restrainer, responses may have been a coincidence with free rats wanting to be in close proximity to the trapped rat. Social contact. An empathic explanation would expect frequency to diminish. Condition 4: Trapped rat could not be released from the restrainer by any action by the free rat. An empathic model would expect latency to increase and frequency to decrease. This again could be explained by free rats motivation to be close to the trapped rat.
- Conditions 1 and two were equal, except that condition 3 was carried out over 27 sessions instead of only 15. Trapped rats returned to the restrainer in C3, but not C1. This is hypothesized to be because trapped rats were at first fearful of the rear door opening. By C3, that neophobia (fear of new things) had dissipated, and they could fulfill desire to be close to the free rat in the other chamber, and the closest they could get was back in the restrainer Investigators of this paper cite Vasconcelos critera for inferring empathic behavior on an actor: Behaviors should be outcome dependent. It should not occur when rescue is not needed or if attempts fail to alleviate distress on the recipient. It should occur when it can be successful. In condition 1, when action would be successful, free rats responded with lower vigor (increased latency, decreased frequency) In condition 3, free rats continued to respond when rescue was not needed (trapped rats already liberated)
- Because the motivation is different. Goes to show that the motivation for rescue behavior is not empathy, its anticipation of social contact
- X axis results grouped in threes, y axis was in log scale. It may have made the graphs look better but its confusing to the reader. How long is that actually in seconds? Or even minutes? There was no frequency data for C2. I think that would be interesting and important since the trapped rat is in the same chamber as the free rat. How would that change? Also, validity of frequency data. In the video scoring, snout contacts were not counted because they couldn’t tell if rats were actually touching the restrainer or just near it. First of all, why would you not count these, since rats almost exclusively used their snouts to touch the sensor? Rats sense of smell and sense of touch through whiskers (including short whiskers <1/4 inch, are extremely important to the way they percieve their world. Third, rats often use their heads/snouts to bite things and manipulate their surroundings. They don’t really use their paws except to groom themselves, bring objects to their mouth (to eat). It seems pretty important Also, didn’t score trapped rats position when free rat was on top of the restrainer, because supposedly you can’t see if the trapped rat is in the restrainer or not. But if he’s not in the outside chamber, hes obviously in the restrainer. The analysis of the videoscoring is also flawed. It tells how much time each rat spends in or in contact with the restrainer, but not whether any of that time is spent there concurrently. Also, the metal strip as a means to open the door seems to invite more problems than it solves. It is not clear that rats know that they are opening the door (as it is in the other study, when the rat opens the actual door). I’m not sure about the validity of using the rats touching the sensor for frequency data. Analysis of condition 4. They took the free rats staying near the restrainer to mean that they were only motivated to be close. But since rats are social animals, surely the free rats proximity to the trapped rat did something to alleviate his distress. I don’t think you can say its not empathy.
- Its really hard to ascribe a mental state to another, and then to say that that mental state is the motivation for behavior is very difficult. There are too many unanswered questions. I don’t think study 2 was done well because it was too easy for the rats to open the door, and social contact really confounded it. What would be interesting is to see if 1. Rats would not liberate a cagemate if it was not in distress 2. Rats would increase distance between themselves and another if it reduced the stress of the first. I am going to fail to reject the null hypothesis. There is just not enough evidence to say that it is solely motivated by empathic feeling.