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I’m always mildly concerned about how shocked people are about animals being conscious beings with feelings. Do people really think we are mentally that different from other animals with brains?
To be fair, with academic types running experiments like this, the question is usually more along the lines of “At what point does instinct become empathy as we would recognize it?”, and depending on how high the criteria is set for empathy there, the level of premeditation may be geniunely surprising in some animals.
Rats are more compassionate than insurance companies CEOs.
Ok, but let’s say they is a toy train and it splits into two tracks and put the rat at the lever.
Rats. Can’t use the term as an insult anymore considering they’re more human than we are.
Seems that’s an insult to the rat.
The owners use their captured public education and for profit media to turn us on one another and make us monsters.
They tell us avarice/greed, a well known character deficit and social blight for thousands of years is instead virtuous rational self-interest.
They force us to compete against one another rather than cooperate with one another as the basis of our economy, when an economy is meant to be a lowly tool of society for the explicit use of maximizing the efficient, equitable distribution of goods and services for the benefit of the citizens of the society. Our tail wags the dog. We are slaves to economic growth/metastasis we as a society do not benefit from.
The problem is that the sociopaths, mentally ill people literally incapable of empathy, something most humans have a strong need to exercise, that are among us quickly game society using their mental deficit as an advantage to take more than they need and manipulate others into elevating them, then manipulate those below them into fighting one another perpetually to stay on top.
Humans are social creatures. We’ve been conditioned to act as monsters, condemning our fellow humans literally dying in our streets of exposure and capital defense force brutality as “lowering our property values.”
This isn’t natural. It’s why our nation’s mental health is basically its own apocalypse of mass depression, anxiety, and never ending trauma. We are strongly discouraged from supporting one another, as we’re supposed to do the impossible, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, then claim we did it alone. That’s the American delusion. 🇺🇸
After observing all of the animals I’ve ever lived with, I’ve come to the opinion (unsupported, I suppose, by any real evidence) that empathy is an important part of being alive. I think every living being has empathy, and humans just got quite good at beating it out of other humans to the point where displaying psychopathic traits became something culturally celebrated.
We’ve been trained to be this way, and we need to reverse that trend.
Altrusim is a good trait to ensure the survival of a species, while being a selfish bastard is a good trait to ensure the survival of the individual. It all depends on the situation.
But don’t you see all the wealth we are creating by doing things this way?!
The Washington Post still has the article up:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-new-model-of-empathy-the-rat/2011/12/08/gIQAAx0jfO_story.html
And here’s the science article that prompted it:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1210789and here’s an old archive.org copy of it before the Washington Post started blocking the wayback machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140114012833/http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-new-model-of-empathy-the-rat/2011/12/08/gIQAAx0jfO_story.htmlI wonder about this in animals all the time. Like, many animals seem to really enjoy being loved on and getting scritches, have a relationship with their owner or caregiver, are happy to see them and snuggle up… but in the wild they might be mostly solitary, only interacting with their own kind for mating and maybe raising young. Yet they’re often very different from the (eat sleep reproduce survive) basic wild animal when given the opportunity. They have personalities, happiness, etc.
Rats, in specific, do what those studying them have described as laugh when being petted/tickled. It’s ultrasonic, so we can’t hear it, but other rats can hear it when a rat is enjoying themselves.
https://www.science.org/content/article/tickled-rats-reveal-brain-structure-controls-laughter
I’ll take the risk of sounding like Willard here, but rats make delightfully playful and affectionate pets.
It sounds counter intuitive but once your rats(need to have at least two) bond to you they treat you like a giant one of them. They’ll groom you for hours, and you can play chase with them with your hands like you would with a kitten(without the scratches!) They’re like a cat and dog together in a much smaller animal. One of mine played fetch.
I just wish they lived longer and weren’t so prone to cancer. Maybe one day science can fix that.
Only 4 or 5 years, right? I don’t think I could handle loving a pet who’s lifespan was that short. But I do know people who have pet rats and they really love them. Doesn’t really surprise me, guinea pigs are similar. And you need to have at least two of them as well.
Yeah, unfortunately they don’t live very long. I actually don’t keep them anymore because it felt like I was setting myself up for heartbreak after awhile.
I’m happy for the experience though! And that doesn’t surprise me about guinea pigs. A lot if people underestimate the intelligence and needs of small pets.
Some dog breeds are trending that way, especially large breeds, anecdotally I know of a bunch of Bernese Mountain Dogs that were 4-5 years due to cancer (which isn’t uncommon), 7-8 is the normal expectancy for them afaik.
I’ve got two brothers we got as kittens, they’re 4 next year, we bond really strongly with animals.
I would never get a purebred dog and that is yet another reason. I have had two mutts live to 14 and another one is 10 now.
Get a mutt and rescue them from a shelter or rescuer. I have not regretted it even if they are little shits. Even the big ones are little shits.
Absolutely agree on that, our cats are rescues and we’d do the same for any dog.
had a Shepard/retriever mutt growing up, by far the longest lived dog I had, her brother was the longest lived of the litter (and the neighbour’s) at like 16. Have family that show for fun, only do it if the dogs enjoy it, I don’t like the way some people talk about their dogs, definitely not a fan of breeding practices in general.
A lot if it is selection bias. Humans prefer animals that show those traits. We instinctively understand how they are thinking/feeling, and that makes us more comfortable with it.
It’s also worth noting that complex mental pathways take a long time to evolve. Nature tends to play with there tuning, rather than strip it out when unnecessary. Most solitary creatures had ancestors that formed groups. There’s no reason to risk breaking useful instincts. They just get overriden by newer ones.
Don’t think there has ever been much dispute of a rat’s intellect
They’re known to be the only animal on the planet more intelligent than dolphins. IIRC only two of them survived though, while the dolphins all left in time.
That’s mice, you fool!
Couldn’t this be explained by the “tit-for-tat” hypothesis? That selfless behaviour is learned in communal animals, and that its implied it will be you who need help next time?
There is a bat species that I think feeds on blood, and they share the food they managed to get in a night, if a bat refuses to share one night then the next time they get left out of the sharing.
I like the one where they gave rats a lot of food and space (rat paradise) and let them breed till they were crawling over eachother till there wasnt enough food for them all. When most of them died and food was available once more, the remainders stopped eating and all the rats died.
Rats are interesting but I think the guy that programmed them left in some bugs.
Yeah idk if I just watched most of my friends and family drop dead from starvation, I don’t think I’d want to go on living either.
rats are strange little critters. incredibly clever, but you’ll never know what they’ll use their smarts for
Why do you say the rats are better than us? Humans can be observed doing the same in similar circumstances.
Rats can eat chocolate?
Yeah to a degree, maybe it was some kinda low sugar chocolate or something
Calling them “bastards” is completely uncalled for
You don’t see them fuckng each other over for a goddamn percentage!
