13 ms·

Rodents exhibit empathy by setting trapped friends free

64 points by dclaysmith 15y ago

themgt 15y ago
Alternate title: Study finds humans selectively block their empathy towards some fellow mammals
tzs 15y ago
That doesn't necessarily show empathy. In a dangerous environment, for instance, it can be better to have others around to lessen your individual risk. It could be freeing the trapped rat in the hope that when the big nasty humans come back they will pick the other rat.
- finnw 15y ago
  Wouldn't your individual risk be lessened by leaving the other rat trapped, so that it is easy prey and more likely to get picked?
  - tzs 15y ago
    Maybe. On the other hand, the trapped rat might be safer as a predator might not be able to get into the cage. There are plenty of possible ways things could work out. For instance, if the rats have figured out that the humans can identify individual rats and treat them different (which they might figure out if the humans have done several kinds of experiments on the same rats because each experiment would have a control group that gets different treatment), the rat outside might think "the humans but this other rat in the cage--if I let it out, then when they come back they'll be distracted putting it back in, and might leave me alone". Or maybe it would be good to let the other rat out so that if danger arrives, you can go hide in the cage. Or it could make sense to have the other rat out so that the two of you can more quickly explore the environment and find a way to escape. The main point is that you can't really attribute letting the other rat out to empathy, as there are many other possible explanations for why a rat might let another rat out.
  - rcthompson 15y ago
    Only if the free rat plans to stick around the trapped one. If the free rat wants to go anywhere and still have safety in numbers, he has to free the trapped one.
- tikhonj 15y ago
  I don't see why empathy and pragmatism have to be mutually exclusive. You can think of empathy as a heuristic for choosing an optimal action: in a lot of cases, one way or another, helping out a fellow rat is beneficial, so empathy is an advantage. Especially as a rat, you don't have the capacity or time to use a significantly more accurate method to choose an action anyhow.
  - tzs 15y ago
    They aren't mutually exclusive, but you can't infer one from behavior unless you eliminate the other as a possible explanation.
    - lusr 15y ago
      It fascinates me that there are so many intelligent people posting here that are unwilling to accept this very basic principle, or debate it, instead choosing to dismiss it outright with various logical fallacies. If I had to guess, people are taking things a bit personally as an attack on their pets, as though requesting further evidence of higher order processing is insinuating that their pets don't really have the feelings they believe their pets do. (Nobody here commenting on the experiment's conclusions is claiming this, as far as I can tell; they're just asking for more conclusive and objective evidence before they believe such conclusions can be made.) Some of the 'reasoning' being used ("Just ask any dog owner") is eerily familiar to the kind of reasoning people use when justifying homeopathy ("It worked for my cousin's ailment", which in the extreme leads to lovely things like Rhino poaching and whale hunting, something I'm sure these people abhor), the paranormal and supernatural ("I sensed something [and my senses are obviously infalible]", which in the extreme leads to a reduced quality of life), religious extremism ("Just ask anybody who's heard God's voice") etc.
- Dn_Ab 15y ago
  I think the rats are intelligent or desensitized enough to have learned that the humans are no threat. But it could be something similarly simple. Like an advantage to helping those as a function of distance measured by genetic similarity, when in a foreign environment. Especially as social animals, strength in numbers type thing. So those who helped each other tended to survive to pass on those genes. Still selfish but emerges as empathetic looking. I too think empathy presumes a far higher intentionality and model of the self for the rat. But their actions should still count as a precursor to empathy. I believe these things are a continuum and divisions along the way are pretty arbitrary. For example does a parrot talk or is it just pattern recognizing? To that I say, what is the difference? Can we say talking is more than simply pattern recognition recursed to the next level? Consider Searle's Chinese Room, where he argues that since a human following a program to translate Chinese does not understand Chinese then a machine running the same also does not understand and hence is not 'strong AI'. I do not agree with his conclusion as I find such a distinction to be meaningless. You can't define what a mind is, human or not, by whether its aware of its operations. That is too slippery a concept and not necessarily an advantage. You can only observe and enumerate what properties the mind does (not) exhibit. Read Peter Watts' Blindsight if you want to see this line of thinking handled incredibly well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(science_fiction_novel) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(science_fiction_nov...
  - lusr 15y ago
    I suspect that this sort of behaviour is indeed a precursor to empathy. I think the debate would be greatly improved if all parties could agree on a definition of "empathy", and then identify whether the experimental design justifies a conclusion regarding empathy, as defined. (As an aside, my problem with Searle's Chinese Room is that Searle never explains how he believes the human mind "understands" and a machine does not. How can you compare the human mind with a machine if you can't define it in comparative terms?)
- stewbrew 15y ago
  Given their mathematical and statistical skills, somebody will soon start hiring rats as financial consultants. Do you really think this is the simpler explanation?
  - lusr 15y ago
    I'm not sure if you are aware of this or not: www.artmarcovici.com/rat-traders Also, I believe it's implicit in parent's post that evolution would produce more rats whose behaviour increases their likelihood of survival. The rats don't need to understand how their behaviour ensures their survival, or that it can be modelled with game theory, etc.
    - stewbrew 15y ago
      I am well aware that rats don't have to "understand" these processes. There is a shift in perspective underlying this argument though that doesn't help when discussing whether a rat is capable of recognizing another rat's distress (i.e., empathy) or how it perceives the situation from a subjective point of view.
moocow01 15y ago
The easier way to determine if humans are the only species who have empathy... Talk to any dog owner.
- tnuc 15y ago
  Are you saying cats have no empathy? :)
- finnw 15y ago
  All that will tell you is that humans will anthropomorphize anything. I would agree with the dog owner, but then you sometimes hear owners of non-social animals (e.g. snakes, octopuses) claiming their pets have empathy. A few people even claim their cars have empathy.
  - ComputerGuru 15y ago
    My car loves me. I'm serious, it's like it knows that I take really good care of it and try not to overwork it when I can. You should see how it responds to my touch far better than any one else's when I'm driving it in the mountains or in inclement conditions. I can tell when it's happy because it's purring, and when it's working too hard it groans and squeals instead. It lets me know when its hungry (oil change indicator), thirsty (windshield wiper indicator), sick (service needed indicator), or just plain out of breath (low tire pressure indicator). I don't understand how some people can be so cruel and say that it can't think and feel for itself. They think just because a human built the machine that built this car, that they're automatically superior to it. They just won't take the time to listen. I used to be like that, but one time... I killed a car. It was by accident and I really didn't mean to do it, but the sounds it was making when it was dying; oh god, the sounds. You would know cars can feel and understand if you heard them.
zeroboy 15y ago
My question is: why don't we show more empathy towards animals? The experimentations and vivisections, urban sprawl and deforestation, the abandonment of pets when they become inconvenient - we as humans don't consider the cruelty of our actions. We figure as long as it can be profited from or paved over, it's justifiable. It's not. One day mankind will grieve because of the suffering we have caused animals. But by then it will be too late.
- mattgreenrocks 15y ago
  The same cognitive dissonance arises when talking about collateral damage of capitalism: "well, that sucks, but capitalism is good, so it's not responsible for those effects." Empathy is the antithesis of power. That's why it will always be the exception in humans.
  - finnw 15y ago
    > The same cognitive dissonance arises when talking about collateral damage of capitalism: "well, that sucks, but capitalism is good, so it's not responsible for those effects." Are you referring to the Halo Effect? (http://lesswrong.com/lw/lj/the_halo_effect/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/lj/the_halo_effect/) Edit: I don't think I meant the Halo Effect - there was another kind of bias I read about on lesswrong.com, but I cannot find it.
- Volpe 15y ago
  We do all of those things to Humans too, it's not that we don't show empathy to animals, we don't show it to anything. Rat 1, Human 0 ?
- thret 15y ago
  Why do we show any empathy towards animals? You can't kill and eat something you empathise with. Empathy towards humans makes sense but I don't see the evolutionary advantage of treasuring all life. That said, I can't even kill spiders. It doesn't make any sense but I've an unavoidable feeling of guilt if I don't release them outside unharmed. Yet I have no problem eating meat. My empathy is irrational.
duck 15y ago
I set a mouse trap yesterday morning and last night went to check on it. The mouse that was caught in it was pretty much gone from being eaten by another mouse (which I'm guessing is the one that I caught this morning). I guess nobody told them about this study.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  Mice are pretty much just herbivores. I think you might something other than just mice to worry about...
  - dimitar 15y ago
    I think he meant that the mouse was eaten by a rat. Rats are much bigger and hunt, kill and eat the similar but smaller mice. In fact there is a term for it: muricide. Rats also practice infanticide. So, yeah rodent morality is also complex.
    - duck 15y ago
      No, it was just another mouse. My original comment wasn't very clear, but I saw it running away when I came to check on the trap. My wife thought that was really gross, but then I reminded her of the time that we saw a seagull eating another smaller seagull while it was still alive and still walking. That topped everything I've seen.
  - wooster 15y ago
    A brief bit of Googling suggests mice commonly eat other dead mice.
orthecreedence 15y ago
My god, other animals besides us have the capacity for empathy. I thought humans were the only creatures in the universe that had the potential for emotion or intelligence. Mind blowing.
dimitar 15y ago
Very interesting page on rat social behavior: http://www.ratbehavior.org/norway_rat_ethogram.htm#SocialBehavior http://www.ratbehavior.org/norway_rat_ethogram.htm#SocialBeh...
anateus 15y ago
I understand "empathy" to mean the ability to feel someone's emotions/pain/etc. What this demonstrates is that rats will go to another rat's aid, and nothing about their internal models for doing so. It is oversimplifying to say something like "oh it's helping the other rat for selfish reason X", but it is equally misleading to apply human models of mind, which we have due to our unique ability to introspect and share that introspection with other members of our species. Models such as kin selection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection) attempt to explain altruism within an evolutionary model, but even if there is a totally different cause for this particular altruistic behavior (and even if it is shown to be almost wholly altruistic, rather than just indirectly self-beneficial, assuming such a distinction exists), there are very few grounds to assume empathy. The most interesting result to me is that the rats demonstrate distress at seeing the suffering, and cease upon release. But before talking about empathy again, we must show that the distress is its own separate thing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voight-Kampff_test#Voight-Kampff_machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voight-Kampff_test#Voight-Kampf...) rather than mere frustration at failed attempts of rescue. So, sure, we've learned something, but I don't think we've demonstrated empathy.
- teyc 15y ago
  There was a time when explorers observed a primitive tribe exhibiting empathy or even morality might exert the same kind of hand-wringing as you did about whether it is actually so.
  - bpd1069 15y ago
    Same thing happened with chimps and the discovery of tool use. Jane Goodall was met by the same resistance. It is a characteristic, I would assume of the social organism as a whole. We have a lot in common with our little burrowing social friends. Empathy being one of them. Altruism is also indicated by leaving the sweets for the trapped rat. Im not a neuroscientist, but I can guess the mirror neurons are at play.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
logn 15y ago
maybe less empathy and more, hey you can help me
MichaelApproved 15y ago
Video showing the rodents in action http://www.newsy.com/mobile/video/study-rats-show-each-other-compassion-empathy/ http://www.newsy.com/mobile/video/study-rats-show-each-other...
ajays 15y ago
I am continuously amused by how humans get in a huff when people anthropmorphize animals' actions... "surely it can't be empathy!" ... "we don't know if the rat is _really_ feeling the trapped rat's pain!!" The question is: why not? Who are we to say that rats (or dogs or cats or crows or elephants or . . . ) can't feel another's pain? Dogs have been known to show emotion. Elephants have been known to show emotion. Chimp mothers express sorrow when their child dies. And so on. But people will come up with contorted explanations for these phenomena: dogs must 'smell' some pheromone that triggers such behavior... chimp mothers are only grieving because it's loss of a valuable tribe resource ... or things to those effect. You know what? Believe what you will. But I have seen more empathy coming from animals than some humans (see Dick Cheney).
- webnrrd2k 15y ago
  I agree. Animals feeling emotions is one of those things that I believe, but can't prove. It just strikes me as another version of the "humans are the center of the univese" theory. Also, it's hard for me to believe that nature hasn't come up with emotions before humans evolved. I'm not saying I understand it very well, but the major brain structures responsible for emotion go back fairly far along the evolutionary tree. Lastly, I just have trouble believing that what I see with my own eyes isn't emotion.
fasdg 15y ago
"The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents" — QED.

64 points by dclaysmith 15y ago

Alternate title: Study finds humans selectively block their empathy towards some fellow mammals

tzs 15y ago

That doesn't necessarily show empathy. In a dangerous environment, for instance, it can be better to have others around to lessen your individual risk. It could be freeing the trapped rat in the hope that when the big nasty humans come back they will pick the other rat.

finnw 15y ago
Wouldn't your individual risk be lessened by leaving the other rat trapped, so that it is easy prey and more likely to get picked?
- tzs 15y ago
  Maybe. On the other hand, the trapped rat might be safer as a predator might not be able to get into the cage. There are plenty of possible ways things could work out. For instance, if the rats have figured out that the humans can identify individual rats and treat them different (which they might figure out if the humans have done several kinds of experiments on the same rats because each experiment would have a control group that gets different treatment), the rat outside might think "the humans but this other rat in the cage--if I let it out, then when they come back they'll be distracted putting it back in, and might leave me alone". Or maybe it would be good to let the other rat out so that if danger arrives, you can go hide in the cage. Or it could make sense to have the other rat out so that the two of you can more quickly explore the environment and find a way to escape. The main point is that you can't really attribute letting the other rat out to empathy, as there are many other possible explanations for why a rat might let another rat out.
- rcthompson 15y ago
  Only if the free rat plans to stick around the trapped one. If the free rat wants to go anywhere and still have safety in numbers, he has to free the trapped one.
tikhonj 15y ago
I don't see why empathy and pragmatism have to be mutually exclusive. You can think of empathy as a heuristic for choosing an optimal action: in a lot of cases, one way or another, helping out a fellow rat is beneficial, so empathy is an advantage. Especially as a rat, you don't have the capacity or time to use a significantly more accurate method to choose an action anyhow.
- tzs 15y ago
  They aren't mutually exclusive, but you can't infer one from behavior unless you eliminate the other as a possible explanation.
  - lusr 15y ago
    It fascinates me that there are so many intelligent people posting here that are unwilling to accept this very basic principle, or debate it, instead choosing to dismiss it outright with various logical fallacies. If I had to guess, people are taking things a bit personally as an attack on their pets, as though requesting further evidence of higher order processing is insinuating that their pets don't really have the feelings they believe their pets do. (Nobody here commenting on the experiment's conclusions is claiming this, as far as I can tell; they're just asking for more conclusive and objective evidence before they believe such conclusions can be made.) Some of the 'reasoning' being used ("Just ask any dog owner") is eerily familiar to the kind of reasoning people use when justifying homeopathy ("It worked for my cousin's ailment", which in the extreme leads to lovely things like Rhino poaching and whale hunting, something I'm sure these people abhor), the paranormal and supernatural ("I sensed something [and my senses are obviously infalible]", which in the extreme leads to a reduced quality of life), religious extremism ("Just ask anybody who's heard God's voice") etc.
Dn_Ab 15y ago
I think the rats are intelligent or desensitized enough to have learned that the humans are no threat. But it could be something similarly simple. Like an advantage to helping those as a function of distance measured by genetic similarity, when in a foreign environment. Especially as social animals, strength in numbers type thing. So those who helped each other tended to survive to pass on those genes. Still selfish but emerges as empathetic looking. I too think empathy presumes a far higher intentionality and model of the self for the rat. But their actions should still count as a precursor to empathy. I believe these things are a continuum and divisions along the way are pretty arbitrary. For example does a parrot talk or is it just pattern recognizing? To that I say, what is the difference? Can we say talking is more than simply pattern recognition recursed to the next level? Consider Searle's Chinese Room, where he argues that since a human following a program to translate Chinese does not understand Chinese then a machine running the same also does not understand and hence is not 'strong AI'. I do not agree with his conclusion as I find such a distinction to be meaningless. You can't define what a mind is, human or not, by whether its aware of its operations. That is too slippery a concept and not necessarily an advantage. You can only observe and enumerate what properties the mind does (not) exhibit. Read Peter Watts' Blindsight if you want to see this line of thinking handled incredibly well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(science_fiction_novel) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(science_fiction_nov...
- lusr 15y ago
  I suspect that this sort of behaviour is indeed a precursor to empathy. I think the debate would be greatly improved if all parties could agree on a definition of "empathy", and then identify whether the experimental design justifies a conclusion regarding empathy, as defined. (As an aside, my problem with Searle's Chinese Room is that Searle never explains how he believes the human mind "understands" and a machine does not. How can you compare the human mind with a machine if you can't define it in comparative terms?)
stewbrew 15y ago
Given their mathematical and statistical skills, somebody will soon start hiring rats as financial consultants. Do you really think this is the simpler explanation?
- lusr 15y ago
  I'm not sure if you are aware of this or not: www.artmarcovici.com/rat-traders Also, I believe it's implicit in parent's post that evolution would produce more rats whose behaviour increases their likelihood of survival. The rats don't need to understand how their behaviour ensures their survival, or that it can be modelled with game theory, etc.
  - stewbrew 15y ago
    I am well aware that rats don't have to "understand" these processes. There is a shift in perspective underlying this argument though that doesn't help when discussing whether a rat is capable of recognizing another rat's distress (i.e., empathy) or how it perceives the situation from a subjective point of view.

moocow01 15y ago

The easier way to determine if humans are the only species who have empathy... Talk to any dog owner.

tnuc 15y ago
Are you saying cats have no empathy? :)
finnw 15y ago
All that will tell you is that humans will anthropomorphize anything. I would agree with the dog owner, but then you sometimes hear owners of non-social animals (e.g. snakes, octopuses) claiming their pets have empathy. A few people even claim their cars have empathy.
- ComputerGuru 15y ago
  My car loves me. I'm serious, it's like it knows that I take really good care of it and try not to overwork it when I can. You should see how it responds to my touch far better than any one else's when I'm driving it in the mountains or in inclement conditions. I can tell when it's happy because it's purring, and when it's working too hard it groans and squeals instead. It lets me know when its hungry (oil change indicator), thirsty (windshield wiper indicator), sick (service needed indicator), or just plain out of breath (low tire pressure indicator). I don't understand how some people can be so cruel and say that it can't think and feel for itself. They think just because a human built the machine that built this car, that they're automatically superior to it. They just won't take the time to listen. I used to be like that, but one time... I killed a car. It was by accident and I really didn't mean to do it, but the sounds it was making when it was dying; oh god, the sounds. You would know cars can feel and understand if you heard them.

zeroboy 15y ago

My question is: why don't we show more empathy towards animals? The experimentations and vivisections, urban sprawl and deforestation, the abandonment of pets when they become inconvenient - we as humans don't consider the cruelty of our actions. We figure as long as it can be profited from or paved over, it's justifiable. It's not. One day mankind will grieve because of the suffering we have caused animals. But by then it will be too late.

mattgreenrocks 15y ago
The same cognitive dissonance arises when talking about collateral damage of capitalism: "well, that sucks, but capitalism is good, so it's not responsible for those effects." Empathy is the antithesis of power. That's why it will always be the exception in humans.
- finnw 15y ago
  > The same cognitive dissonance arises when talking about collateral damage of capitalism: "well, that sucks, but capitalism is good, so it's not responsible for those effects." Are you referring to the Halo Effect? (http://lesswrong.com/lw/lj/the_halo_effect/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/lj/the_halo_effect/) Edit: I don't think I meant the Halo Effect - there was another kind of bias I read about on lesswrong.com, but I cannot find it.
Volpe 15y ago
We do all of those things to Humans too, it's not that we don't show empathy to animals, we don't show it to anything. Rat 1, Human 0 ?
thret 15y ago
Why do we show any empathy towards animals? You can't kill and eat something you empathise with. Empathy towards humans makes sense but I don't see the evolutionary advantage of treasuring all life. That said, I can't even kill spiders. It doesn't make any sense but I've an unavoidable feeling of guilt if I don't release them outside unharmed. Yet I have no problem eating meat. My empathy is irrational.

duck 15y ago

I set a mouse trap yesterday morning and last night went to check on it. The mouse that was caught in it was pretty much gone from being eaten by another mouse (which I'm guessing is the one that I caught this morning). I guess nobody told them about this study.

burgerbrain 15y ago
Mice are pretty much just herbivores. I think you might something other than just mice to worry about...
- dimitar 15y ago
  I think he meant that the mouse was eaten by a rat. Rats are much bigger and hunt, kill and eat the similar but smaller mice. In fact there is a term for it: muricide. Rats also practice infanticide. So, yeah rodent morality is also complex.
  - duck 15y ago
    No, it was just another mouse. My original comment wasn't very clear, but I saw it running away when I came to check on the trap. My wife thought that was really gross, but then I reminded her of the time that we saw a seagull eating another smaller seagull while it was still alive and still walking. That topped everything I've seen.
- wooster 15y ago
  A brief bit of Googling suggests mice commonly eat other dead mice.

orthecreedence 15y ago

My god, other animals besides us have the capacity for empathy. I thought humans were the only creatures in the universe that had the potential for emotion or intelligence. Mind blowing.

dimitar 15y ago

Very interesting page on rat social behavior: http://www.ratbehavior.org/norway_rat_ethogram.htm#SocialBehavior http://www.ratbehavior.org/norway_rat_ethogram.htm#SocialBeh...

anateus 15y ago

I understand "empathy" to mean the ability to feel someone's emotions/pain/etc. What this demonstrates is that rats will go to another rat's aid, and nothing about their internal models for doing so. It is oversimplifying to say something like "oh it's helping the other rat for selfish reason X", but it is equally misleading to apply human models of mind, which we have due to our unique ability to introspect and share that introspection with other members of our species. Models such as kin selection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection) attempt to explain altruism within an evolutionary model, but even if there is a totally different cause for this particular altruistic behavior (and even if it is shown to be almost wholly altruistic, rather than just indirectly self-beneficial, assuming such a distinction exists), there are very few grounds to assume empathy. The most interesting result to me is that the rats demonstrate distress at seeing the suffering, and cease upon release. But before talking about empathy again, we must show that the distress is its own separate thing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voight-Kampff_test#Voight-Kampff_machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voight-Kampff_test#Voight-Kampf...) rather than mere frustration at failed attempts of rescue. So, sure, we've learned something, but I don't think we've demonstrated empathy.

teyc 15y ago
There was a time when explorers observed a primitive tribe exhibiting empathy or even morality might exert the same kind of hand-wringing as you did about whether it is actually so.
- bpd1069 15y ago
  Same thing happened with chimps and the discovery of tool use. Jane Goodall was met by the same resistance. It is a characteristic, I would assume of the social organism as a whole. We have a lot in common with our little burrowing social friends. Empathy being one of them. Altruism is also indicated by leaving the sweets for the trapped rat. Im not a neuroscientist, but I can guess the mirror neurons are at play.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

logn 15y ago

maybe less empathy and more, hey you can help me

MichaelApproved 15y ago

Video showing the rodents in action http://www.newsy.com/mobile/video/study-rats-show-each-other-compassion-empathy/ http://www.newsy.com/mobile/video/study-rats-show-each-other...

ajays 15y ago

I am continuously amused by how humans get in a huff when people anthropmorphize animals' actions... "surely it can't be empathy!" ... "we don't know if the rat is _really_ feeling the trapped rat's pain!!" The question is: why not? Who are we to say that rats (or dogs or cats or crows or elephants or . . . ) can't feel another's pain? Dogs have been known to show emotion. Elephants have been known to show emotion. Chimp mothers express sorrow when their child dies. And so on. But people will come up with contorted explanations for these phenomena: dogs must 'smell' some pheromone that triggers such behavior... chimp mothers are only grieving because it's loss of a valuable tribe resource ... or things to those effect. You know what? Believe what you will. But I have seen more empathy coming from animals than some humans (see Dick Cheney).

webnrrd2k 15y ago
I agree. Animals feeling emotions is one of those things that I believe, but can't prove. It just strikes me as another version of the "humans are the center of the univese" theory. Also, it's hard for me to believe that nature hasn't come up with emotions before humans evolved. I'm not saying I understand it very well, but the major brain structures responsible for emotion go back fairly far along the evolutionary tree. Lastly, I just have trouble believing that what I see with my own eyes isn't emotion.

fasdg 15y ago

"The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents" — QED.