Rats demonstrate empathy in lab

[PC LOAD LETTER]

http://www.livescience.com/17378-rats-show-empathy.html

Caught this on reddit

[piet11111]

Good to know rats make better people then politicians and most multimillionaires.

[Le Socialiste]

Guess this disproves the assertion that humans and animals are inherently self-serving beings, eh?

Seriously though, this is pretty cool. I'd be interested to hear if the same happened for rats who weren't together for two weeks (total strangers). It's also curious that the rat 'freeing' the chocolate shares it with its partner - and willingly.

[Drosophila]

If this is true, then it further shows that religious notion that humans are made in the image and likeness of god is bullshit.

[Sasha]

Guess this disproves the assertion that humans and animals are inherently self-serving beings, eh?

Seriously though, this is pretty cool. I'd be interested to hear if the same happened for rats who weren't together for two weeks (total strangers). It's also curious that the rat 'freeing' the chocolate shares it with its partner - and willingly.

Earlier research has shown with a experiment where rats would get treat but another rat an electric shock if they push a button that female rats always will go "on strike" but male rats only if they knew each other. Remarkably similar results where shown in experiments with chimps and humans.

But empathy etc are offcourse still very much self serving in essence, there are obvious self serving reasons why we developed intricate social structures.
Again I have to push the books by primatogolist frans de waal, especially "chimpanzee politics" and "age of empathy"

[Zav]

This isn't really news...
Kropotkin already showed this effect in Mutual Aid 109 years ago.