In their experiments, Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal and his colleagues placed pairs of rats living together in a new enclosure with one of them enclosed in a closed tube with a door that could be opened from the outside (albeit with some difficulty). The free rat was agitated to see its confined mate, indicating that there was a“emotional contagion”, a phenomenon typical of human beings who can feel the fear and pain suffered by others as if it were their own. After several days in the same situation, the “free” rats taught themselves (without training) to open the door.
To see if what really drove them to act was theempathy, the scientists tried placing a toy rat behind the door, but no response was generated. They also checked what happened if when opening the door to the “prisoner” she went to a different compartment, and they confirmed that she was also released. This indicated that the rat’s motivation for opening the door was not the need for social contact, but only“alleviate the suffering of the other rat”, explain the researchers in the journalScience. Chocolate cookies were also placed in a compartment for the rat to choose what to do first: eat or release its partner. The rodent always chose to “save” the other rat first and eat later, even if that meant sharing food.
The authors emphasize that there was a higher proportion of female rats that opened the door to the trapped rat than males, emphasizing thatfemales are more empathetic than males.
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