Cagebreak! Rats Will Work To Free A Trapped Pal Calling someone
a "rat" is no compliment, but a new study shows that rats
actually are empathetic and will altruistically lend a helping
paw to a cage-mate who is stuck in a trap. Not only will rats
frantically work to free their trapped cage-mate, they will do
so even when there's a tempting little pile of chocolate chips
nearby, the study reveals. Instead of leaving their pal in the
trap and selfishly gobbling the candy all by themselves, rats
will free their cage-mate and share the chocolate. "To me that's
absolutely stunning," says neurobiologist Peggy Mason of the
University of Chicago. "The fact that the rat does that is
really amazing." Mason and her colleagues designed a series of
experiments, described in the journal Science, to explore the
evolutionary roots of empathy. They wanted to look at rats
because they already knew, from previous work, that rodents can
be emotionally affected by the emotions of their cage-mates. For
example, during lab procedur