Animals & nature · 2020
Can empathy alone explain why rats open a box to free another rat?
Not on the evidence from this laboratory experiment. Rats usually opened a box holding another rat, but after repeated trials they also opened it when it was empty. The pattern suggests that learning the task may contribute; it does not rule out empathy.
Details
Researchers adapted a task in which a free rat could open a box holding another rat to investigate what motivates the opening behavior. Empathy—sharing another's emotional state and taking its perspective—was one possible explanation, rather than something the act of opening the box could establish by itself.
The order of experience mattered. After repeated trials with a trapped rat, rats continued opening the box even when it was empty. But when trials began with an empty box, rats did not open it, and opening remained modest in later trials with a trapped rat. Performance generally improved with practice. Together, these results suggest that the trapped rat's presence may trigger, and possibly reinforce, learning of the task.
Having previously been released by another rat, or having previously been confined, did not improve performance. The authors suggest that performance may already have been too high for improvement to show. Exploration of the box and a desire for social contact did not appear to be key motivators either. The experiment therefore challenges an empathy-only explanation, not the possibility that empathy plays a part. The relative contributions of different motivations remain unresolved.
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