RI, MA EHS Pest Control Blog

Research Uncovers Empathy in Rats

As charges of greed and self-interest fly in these hyper-partisan political times, humans might do well to look to rats for lessons in kindness and caring.

A University of Chicago experiment to determine how much empathy rats have for each other had some surprising results, which were published Friday in the research journal Science.

In laboratory studies, a rat was restrained in a small cage that could be opened only from the outside. A second rat, seeing the predicament of the trapped rat, immediately began tirelessly trying to find a way to free his fellow rat.

Eventually, the second rat taught itself to open the cage door, freeing the restrained rat, leading to what strongly resembled a triumphal celebration between the two. Even when faced with an alternative choice of chocolate chips, the free rat would not be deterred from helping its caged fellow rat.

As simple as it sounds, the experiment is being hailed as a new paradigm that will help scientists trace the development of emotion in mammals back through the evolutionary tree.

Previously, scientists thought that empathy and pro-social behavior to help others were unique to humans, said Jeffrey Mogil, a researcher at McGill University in Canada who has done similar studies on mice.

“This study shows the roots of human empathy didn’t just appear but evolved,” said Mogil, who was not connected with the University of Chicago study. “It is very impressive, showing really robust and conclusive evidence that rats show pro-social (helping) behavior. You can argue why the rats are doing it, but you can’t argue anymore that the rats are doing it.”

The experiment is the work of University of Chicago doctoral student Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal; her adviser, Jean Decety, a professor of psychology and psychiatry who studies human empathy; and Peggy Mason, a neurobiology professor who studies pain modulation and relief.

Decety said it has been proved in past studies that rats also experience a primitive form of empathy called emotional contagion — the sort of thing where if one baby in a group of babies begins to cry, they all break out in tears.

“Ben-Ami came to my lab to do her Ph.D. with an idea of using an animal model to study higher forms of empathy,” said Decety, who enlisted Mason for a study that wound up taking three years.

The team first paired rats of the same gender for three weeks.

Then they placed one of the pair in a small, Plexiglas restraint cage, locked by a door that could only be opened from the outside. The cage was placed in a larger enclosure where the rat’s partner roamed free.

By means the researchers aren’t sure of, the caged rat seemed to communicate its distress to the freed rat, and the freed rat sprang into action.

“The free rat jumps on the restraining cage immediately, pushing it, biting at it, touching its nose and whiskers through the openings in the restraining cage with those of the trapped rat,” Mason said. “Clearly it wants to help out the trapped rat.”

After about six days, the free rat would accidentally open the door and from then on quickly learned how to deliberately open it, and then excitedly interact with its now-free partner as they raced around the enclosure.

“I can’t say that they are celebrating,” said Mason. “But sure looks like a celebration.”

Because rats love chocolate, in some experiments the scientists placed two restraint cages in an enclosure with a rat that already knew how to open the cage door. One cage contained a rat, the other five chocolate chips.

“We wanted to ask how much the free rat valued being able to liberate the caged rat,” Mason said. “They like their chocolate chips, but the free rat would open both cages in no particular order.

“The free (rat) could have done all manner of things to monopolize the chocolate chips, but on average it always left one and a half chocolate chips for the liberated rat. That’s impressive — a hard thing for primates to do — showing it puts equal value on chocolate and freeing its partner.”

Eventually rats that did not know each other were used, and the free rat still worked hard to liberate the stranger from the cage.

George Williams,
General Manager - Staff Entomologist

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA 

Scary Food Facts: Insects & Rodent Hairs In your food? The FDA Says It's OK

Scary Food Fact No. 1: FDA Allows Rodent Hairs And Bugs into Peanut Butter, and Beetle Eggs in Canned Asparagus

When dealing with produce that has been harvested from the field, it’s pretty difficult to ensure that every teeny tiny critter that may have hopped onto a leaf or a stem, or nibbled their way inside of a tasty fruit is removed before the produce is processed and sold to the consumer. And after all, if you eat a little maggot, insect larvae or even a smidgen of mammalian excreta, you’ll probably be just fine.

In fact, the FDA is so certain you won’t suffer any adverse effects from ingesting minuscule amounts of insects, or “excreta” or rodent hairs (well those rodents, they do get everywhere) that it has published a little booklet called the Defect Level Handbook that advises food manufacturers as to what amounts of contamination from (harmless) foreign material are acceptable. When it comes to frozen or canned asparagus, the maximum level of contamination is “10% by count of spears or pieces {that} are infested with 6 or more attached asparagus beetle eggs and/or sacs.”

With frozen broccoli, come in under an “average of 60 or more aphids and/or thrips and/or mites per 100 grams” and it’s all good. As for cinnamon bark, more than an “average of 1 mg or more {of} mammalian excreta per pound” will get you in trouble. And when it comes to peanut butter, manufacturers can turn a blind eye to an “average of 1 or more rodent hairs per 100 grams,” but no more.

George Williams,
General Manager - Staff Entomologist

Pest Control, RI, Pest Control, MA