The DOI matches its Crossref record; 37 of the 38 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Rats demonstrate helping behavior toward a soaked conspecific
Abstract
Helping behavior is a prosocial behavior whereby an individual helps another irrespective of disadvantages to him or herself. In the present study, we examined whether rats would help distressed, conspecific rats that had been soaked with water. In Experiment 1, rats quickly learned to liberate a soaked cagemate from the water area by opening the door to allow the trapped rat into a safe area. Additional tests showed that the presentation of a distressed cagemate was necessary to induce rapid door-opening behavior. In addition, it was shown that rats dislike soaking and that rats that had previously experienced a soaking were quicker to learn how to help a cagemate than those that had never been soaked. In Experiment 2, the results indicated that rats did not open the door to a cagemate that was not distressed. In Experiment 3, we tested behavior when rats were forced to choose between opening the door to help a distressed cagemate and opening a different door to obtain a food reward. Irrespective of how they learned to open the door, in most test trials, rats chose to help the cagemate before obtaining a food reward, suggesting that the relative value of helping others is greater than the value of a food reward. These results suggest that rats can behave prosocially and that helper rats may be motivated by empathy-like feelings toward their distressed cagemate.
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“Recent studies suggest that rats also demonstrate helping behavior toward distressed conspecifics, such as those in a narrow tube (Bartal et al., 2011, 2016) and in water (Sato et al., 2015; Yamagishi et al., 2019, 2020).”
From Helping behavior in prairie voles: a model of empathy and the importance of oxytocin (2022) · cites this paper as Sato et al., 2015
Citations
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Do pigs have altruistic behaviour based on cognitive empathy?
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Predicting climate-driven urban rat release and associated risks across climate zones
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Metadata
- Authors
- Sato, N., Tan, L., Tate, K., & Okada, M.
- Affiliations
- Kwansei Gakuin University (JP)
- Corresponding author
- Sato, Nobuya
- ORCID
- Sato, Nobuya
- Venue
- Animal Cognition
- Published
- 2015-05-12
- Volume
- 18
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1039-1047
- ISSN
- 1435-9448 (ISSN-L)
- 1435-9456
- OpenAlex
- W349051442
- Cited by
- 224
- References
- 38
- Citations by year
- 2026: 15 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 22 · 2023: 21 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 29 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 20 · 2018: 28 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 5
- FWCI
- 34.91
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2015-07-25)
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Animal Cognition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- JSPS KAKENHI (26118514, 24500481)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Primate Behavior and Ecology
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Animal Science and Zoology › Animal Behavior and Welfare Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Keywords
- prosocial behavior, helping behavior, rats, empathy, prosocial motivation
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Behavior, Animal, Empathy, Female, Helping Behavior, Learning, Male, Reward, Rats, Sprague-Dawley, Rats
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