Altruism, empathy, and rats
"Claudia Rutte and Michael Taborsky of the University of Berne, Switzerland, trained rats to pull a lever that released food for their partner in the next cage. If the rats subsequently received snacks released by lever-pulling strangers in neighbouring cages, they were more likely to lever-pull and so feed another unfamiliar rat in the future."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19526115.100-rats-influenced-by-the-kindness-of-strangers.html
I thought this was interesting. I wonder if the rats simply learned to associate lever-pulling with somebody receiving food, and thus pulled the levers in the hope of receiving food themselves, or if they deliberately decided to give food to a stranger.
If the latter, this seems remarkably empathic, perhaps even moral. What is the behavioral threshold at which a rat (or a human) can be considered to have a soul?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19526115.100-rats-influenced-by-the-kindness-of-strangers.html
I thought this was interesting. I wonder if the rats simply learned to associate lever-pulling with somebody receiving food, and thus pulled the levers in the hope of receiving food themselves, or if they deliberately decided to give food to a stranger.
If the latter, this seems remarkably empathic, perhaps even moral. What is the behavioral threshold at which a rat (or a human) can be considered to have a soul?