Researchers in neuroscience find that rodents show empathetic behavior toward each other

In a series of experiments, University of Chicago researchers observed the first evidence of helping behavior triggered by empathy in laboratory rats. The researchers, psychology graduate student and first author Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal and co-authors Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, and Peggy Mason, Professor of Neurobiology, published their observation today in Science. It places the origin of pro-social helping behavior earlier in the evolutionary tree than previously thought. Though empathetic behavior has been observed anecdotally in non-human primates and other wild species, the concept had not previously been observed in rodents in a laboratory setting.