Researchers found that lab rats are willing to help set their partner free

If you had to choose between helping a tortured friend out of their misery & getting 1 million dollar all for yourself, which one would you choose? We all know that a lot of people out there will choose money.

However, Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal from the University of Chicago had discovered that rats are able to learn and willing to set-free their cage-mate. And unlike most human, this rat seems willing to help even when it got nothing in return.

The researcher even try to distract the rat by using chocolate but the rat still keep it focus to save the trapped cage mate.

However, lab rats helping each other weren’t actually a new discovery. Back in 1959, Russell Church, a psychologist had train a rat to press a lever to get food. The psychologist then connects the lever to another cage that contains another rat.

If the first rat pushes the lever, it will get the food but the rat in the other cage will get a painful electrical shock. What happen next is amazing, after realizing that the lever that it push will cause painful electrical shock to the other rat, the first rat simply avoid the lever.

Russell Church then published his discovery in a paper called “Emotional reactions of rats to the pain of others”.

In 2006, Dale Langford from McGill University had made another similar research and she gets more evident that rats feel empathy.

What she did is she put a couple of rats together for two weeks before separating them. One of the rats is puts inside of a cage, and the other rat is outside of the cage. The rat can free his trapped partner by pushing against a restraining door and tipping it over. After about a week of learning how to do that, the rat successfully set his partner free.

These two experiment show that rat can feel empathy and willing to take action to help each other.

Source: discovermagizine

Comments

12 awesome animal typography

An Australia graphic designer, Dan Fleming had create a very creative project where he draw animals using the alphabet that is used to spell the animals. This kind of art is known as typography and it involve using a variation of colors and alphabet to draw the shape of the animals. The art itself are pretty interesting and if you look at the drawing below, you might realize that this kind of drawing is very suitable to be turned into a company logo especially if your company name have an animals name in it. For example, I can see some company named Snail Corporation using this kind of art and drawing as their company logo. However, before we take a lot at the drawing itself, let read a little bit about the designer. His name is Dan Fleming, work as a graphic designer and specializing in brand identity and logo design. Other than holding a B.A. in Graphic & Communication Design from the University Of Leeds, he also have 4 years of experience! You can visit his website, h...

10 odd buildings from around world

Since the beginning of human civilizations, we had build a lot of unique and odd structures. It sure take a lot of creativities and talent to design and to actually build these buildings. In today post, we will take a look at 10 strangest building from around world. Montreal Biosphere in Canada Cubic Houses in Netherlands Eden project in U.K Habitat 67 in Canada Krzywy Domek in Poland La Pedrera in Spain Guggenheim Museum in Spain National Theatre in China Olympic Stadium in Canada Waldspirale in Germany

9 of the oldest trees in the world

They had live for thousand of years. For decades, they see the rise and fall of the humans empires, becoming a silent witness of human history. That is the story of the oldest tree in the world. Today, we’re revealing 9 of the oldest living tree on earth. Methuselah The Methuselah tree Methuselah is a pine tree and considered as world oldest tree. How old is the oldest tree? you might wonder, the Methuselah had live for more than 4,800 years. It is located in Great Basin Bristlecone, Nevada. There was suppose to be an even older tree called Prometheus there but the tree was cut down in 1964. Sarv e-Abarkooh The Sarv e-Abarkooh tree This tree is located in Abarkooh, Iran. Sarv e-Abarkooh is a cypress tree that had live for almost 4,000 years. The tree is also known as 'Zoroastrian Sarv' and it is a symbol of community and religion for the Iranian. Alerce Alerce tree Base on the fossils that they found, researchers estimate that this species exist sinc...

Prototype Alpha

Search This Blog