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Does a rat release a soaked conspecific due to empathy?

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posted on 2023-08-05, 11:49 authored by Lindsay P. Schwartz, Alan Silberberg, Anna H. Casey, David KearnsDavid Kearns, Burton Slotnick

In Experiment 1, rats choosing in an E maze preferred to release a rat standing in a pool of water to dry ground over a rat already standing on dry ground. Five additional experiments showed that the choosing rat's preference for releasing the wet rat was maintained by two separable outcomes: (1) the social contact offered by the released rat and (2) the reinforcing value of proximity to a pool of water. These results call into question Sato et al.'s (Anim Cogn 18:1039-1047, 2015) claim to have demonstrated that a rat's releasing of a wet rat to dry ground is empathically motivated.

History

Publisher

Journal of Animal Cognition

Notes

Author manuscript. Published in final edited form as: Anim Cogn. 2017 March ; 20(2): 299–308. doi:10.1007/s10071-016-1052-8.

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http://hdl.handle.net/1961/auislandora:83877

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