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Animals in the wild found to use running wheel if given the choice
- ekianjo 12y agoThe frog video made me laugh. It's a great experiment and this is something really new about wild animal behavior.
- rtpg 12y ago>The researchers claim the animals ran on the wheels because they enjoyed it, which could be a little bit of anthropomorphizing, as no one has been able to prove that animals other than humans experience emotions. Is this really the state of the art? I thought the entire animal rights movement is rooted in the idea that animals can experience emotion This is pretty great research, seeing a slug in a running wheel is particularly silly
- Lost_BiomedE 12y agoWhen working in labs studying brain function, the oddest thing I found was the huge resistance in what or what not an animal can do. Even in the face of years of research by big and small names, even with video, even when you train an animal and show them. They couldn't even provide a good hypothesis on why it was not so. It was argued circularly like trying to talk a paranoid schizophrenic out of their false world-view. Very frustrating. I would usually just tell them that if they could find a reason it wasn't so, they could easily get a nature paper out of it.
- sillysaurus3 12y agoCould you provide an example? I'm having trouble understanding what you mean.
- Lost_BiomedE 12y agoIt could be as simple as a mouse being able to discriminate white from black or low tones from high tones. Sometimes I think the culture in some areas of science has become twisted. It really has to be experienced to be believed.
- sillysaurus3 12y agoAh, are you saying that scientists had trouble accepting the idea that a mouse could discriminate white from black? It seems like a repeatable test would be pretty convincing evidence. What justification was there for ignoring it?
- rurounijones 12y ago> This is pretty great research, seeing a slug in a running wheel is particularly silly I think having some (seemingly) humourous bits in research is a great way to make it presentable to the public. Personally I found if very funny.
- Houshalter 12y agoSometimes yes. Other times the silly bit becomes the headline and the rest is ignored.
- rurounijones 12y agoah yes, good point.
- devnonymous 12y ago> > The researchers claim the animals ran on the wheels because they enjoyed > > it, which could be a little bit of anthropomorphizing, as no one has been > > able to prove that animals other than humans experience emotions. > Is this really the state of the art? I thought the entire animal rights > movement is rooted in the idea that animals can experience emotion Indeed. That statement surprised me too, since I remember reading a number of sources stating that research pretty much confirms that some animals do experience emotions. So I headed over to wikipedia[1] and saw that although some (most?) research does lean towards confirming this, the scientific community is not convinced, yet. Interesting stuff. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion_in_animals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion_in_animals
- dueprocess 12y agoThe "scientific community" doesn't have a unified view on animal emotion, or on any matter. However, it is widely understood that animals are non-human persons who are aware of their own existence and who feel a wide range of emotions, just like we do. Mice feel empathy[1], elephants grieve[2], birds hold funerals for their dead[3] and so on[4]. But yes, for many scientists the overwhelming evidence that animals are sentient beings[5] with feelings akin to ours is an inconvenient truth, since nearly 20 million animals are killed each year during experimentation in the U.S. alone[6]. [1]http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/researchers-say-mice-feel-empathy-with-peers/ http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/researchers-say-mice-feel... [2] http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/06/when-doves-cry-scientific-american-explores-grief-in-animals http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/06/when-doves-cry-scientific-a... [3] http://news.discovery.com/animals/birds-hold-avian-funerals-for-their-dead-120905.htm http://news.discovery.com/animals/birds-hold-avian-funerals-... [4] http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201112/empathic-rats-and-ravishing-ravens http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201112/e... [5] http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201306/universal-declaration-animal-sentience-no-pretending http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201306/u... [6] http://www.statisticbrain.com/animal-testing-statistics/ http://www.statisticbrain.com/animal-testing-statistics/
- lilsunnybee 12y ago
- Lerc 12y agoThere's proof and proof. No one has managed to prove other humans experience emotions, or even exist. Given a hypothetical model of a continually manipulated memory and consciousness you could even argue that you can't prove that you yourself have emotions (you might merely have the mistaken belief that you experience them). To take a more pragmatic approach to proof (good enough but not absolute) Humans and some animals experience emotions. At the very least most Mammals. Probably not all animals. A trickier proposition would be whether all vertebrates do, that's a different level of debate entirely. If you can't take things like the Monkey fairness tests as a sign of emotions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg&feature=player_detailpage#t=75 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg&feature=player_d... then you have a standard of proof that a lot of humans wouldn't meet.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- olouv 12y agoI'd highly recommend the Blackfish documentary about killer whales regarding mammal emotions (trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OEjYquyjcg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OEjYquyjcg). Especially this part where a mother is separated from its baby, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWFo6kf21Hw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWFo6kf21Hw ; it gives pretty good insight about whether animals can experience emotions.
- meowface 12y agoYep, I absolutely agree. Even if mammal emotions have not been scientifically "proven", I think there's a lot of strong evidence that they do experience most or all basic emotions. It's not like it's very shocking that they would, either, considering humans aren't that distantly related from them.
- koralatov 12y agoAs someone who has two cats, and has had a dog and a cat previously, I'm always amazed when I come across people who categorically state that animals don't have emotions. Spend a small amount of time with a cat or a dog, and it becomes pretty clear that they have moods and emotional states, albeit simpler ones that humans. I realise that domestication will have changed animals and their environmental responses, but I find it very hard to believe that dogs or cats would have developed emotions from scratch in the ~10,000 years since they were domesticated. In my experience, those who claim animals don't have emotions are usually justifying some kind of behaviour; in one case, it was a hunter, and another, someone who was generally unpleasant and cruel to animals. The former was otherwise a nice guy, though I found his hobby extremely distasteful; the latter was an irredeemable arsehole.
- Shish2k 12y ago> I thought the entire animal rights movement is rooted in the idea that animals can experience emotion I thought it was rooted in people's knee-jerk anthropomorphic emotions, science be damned... (Not saying they're right or wrong; they may well be right - but pretty much everyone I know who is involved in that movement does so for un-scientific reasons)
- arrrg 12y agoAnimal rights seem like a predominantly ethical issue to me that has little to do with science.
- koide 12y agoIt's an ethical issue because it's likely that they have emotions. For instance, there is not a widespread movement for the ethical treatment of rocks. If science moved that likelihood close to certainty, the animal movements would gain lots of traction, which is what might be happening already
- Shorel 12y agoInsects are animals. Jellyfish are animals. I don't think they can feel the great range of emotions mammals can. In fact they totally lack a brain limbic system, and it is presumed they can't. Yes, this means that I believe it is unethical to torture a dolphin or a dog, but I don't give a damn for mosquitoes or flies.
- Houshalter 12y agoWhat science do you suggest they are ignoring? I wouldn't call it "knee-jerk". It's not a reaction to a new thing. It is the new thing. Animals not having rights has been the norm for a long time.
- Shish2k 12y ago> What science do you suggest they are ignoring? All of it - again not saying they're wrong, just that the overall mindset I've seen is "I believe animals have emotions, and that's what matters" or "we don't need proof, it's just obvious", not "I have collected evidence beyond anecdotes that animals have emotions". By knee-jerk, I mean people tend to believe first, and look at the evidence either later or never. (Though to be fair, much of the animal-non-rights movement seems to be similarly non-scientific :P)
- cLeEOGPw 12y ago> is rooted in the idea that animals can experience emotion Is this really still a question? Isn't it common sense that many animals do have emotions? If you call emotion a state of mind, controlled by a flood of certain hormones/neurotransmitters into the brain, then even the most simple animals will have at least fear emotion. I'm pretty sure most developed animals like elephants, orcas, etc., have pretty complex emotions that are not too far from humans.
- anon4 12y agoSometimes it seems obvious they do. Other times you think they seem to be having an experience, but it's not really comparable to human emotions. And several times per day you doubt the presence of higher brain functions in the people around you.
- w0utert 12y agoWhy should the 'emotions' animals can or can not experience have to be like 'human emotions' though? Maybe the dog can be 'sad' in a way that isn't exactly like sadness as experienced by humans, but it's still an emotion, right?
- cLeEOGPw 12y agoIt doesn't matter how it seems though. Fact is they have. What many are not aware of, is that when they mean "animals have emotions", they actually mean "animals have exact same emotions as human", which is false. But saying that animals don't have emotions is the same as saying that dogs are blind just because they can't differentiate some colors humans can.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoI think that the criticism that it is wrong to read emotional responses in animal behavior runs somewhat counter to evolution as it assumes that our emotional responses have not developed from our mammalian ancestry, but have rather sprung fully formed from somewhere. I tend to see the concept of anthropomorphism as something of a Abrahamic position, as it only makes sense if you already think of humans as being separate from animals and nature in general.
- dueprocess 12y agoThe "Abrahamic position" comment was interesting, although I'm not certain I understand what you meant. I do know that while the nomadic culture of Abraham's time used animals for sacrifice and the necessities of life, the Torah explicitly states that animals have souls[1]. The Bible goes on to say animals have an affinity to God[2] and will go to heaven[3]. [1] Gen 1-20-21, 24, 30 (translation from Hebrew word nephesh) [2] Ps 148:7-10, 150:6 [3] Isa 65:25, Rev 5:13-14
- lotsofmangos 12y agoWhat I was getting at is that in the Abrahamic tradition, while animals may sometimes be considered to have a form of soul, they are still kept very distinct from humans, who are considered made in gods own image. In some other cultures, such as Hinduism, although the form that a soul inhabits affects it, the soul itself can move from animal to human and back again over cycles of reincarnation, so there may be less resistance in those cultures to the idea that humans are part of a continuum rather than being a separate class of entity.
- DanBC 12y agoBut here's what people say about "dominion" in the bible. http://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/2860/what-does-dominon-mean-in-genesis http://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/2860/what-do...
- dueprocess 12y agoIn Psalms 145:8-21, God is described as exercising dominion over creation with compassion and loving kindness. As an aside, I think dominion also refers to harnessing and utilizing natural resources in an economic sense. In Genesis chapter one, God mentions the word 'good' seven times, each time in reference to His creation. The eighth time the word good is used is for gold[1], the eternal symbol of commerce. [1] Gen 2:12
- Houshalter 12y agoI don't know how credible this is, but scientists have apparently declared that some non-human animals have consciousness: http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConscious... >The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.
- mantrax5 12y agoWell that's humans for you. Until proven otherwise, a species lacks intelligence, emotions and self-awareness. It was not long time ago we'd claim that for our peers, based on silly traits like skin color. By the way, I wonder where's the "proof" that humans experience emotions. I demand someone prove it to me.
- cicero 12y agoWe can't prove that other humans experience emotions; each individual only knows what he or she experiences. It's possible that everyone else is a sophisticated simulation.
- lotsofmangos 12y agoIt's possible that everyone else is a sophisticated simulation. I'm not. I'm just the output of /dev/random on a server in Iceland, converted directly into ascii by a line of perl. It is pure chance that anything I post is coming out as understandable words. vyfQUct 18x9t ngm3H60gODwOG2OpRSeSp5 7cMG3fF9
- mantrax5 12y agoThen why do we expect to prove such traits for animals? Keep in mind we use said "proofs" to justify how we treat animals used for food, experiments, hunting them for sport, and so on.
- pwg 12y ago> as no one has been able to prove that animals other than humans experience emotions. Anyone who has ever had a dog who happens to be afraid of thunderstorms will tell you that dogs can very genuinely experience fear. Fear is an emotion (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fear http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fear).
- goodcanadian 12y agoI would not use the animal rights movement as an example of scientific rigour. :) My wife is a biologist working in animal behaviour. Among her peers, it is widely accepted that animals have emotions. Proving it in a scientifically rigourous manner, however, is extremely difficult.
- gosub 12y agoI would imagine that the sudden appearance of food and new environment elements would set the mind of any animal in a "run around and explore" mode, especially for species living near humans.
- ars 12y agoThe wheel was there for 3 years.
- lawlessone 12y agoAnd one of them ran for up to 18 minutes.
- rando289 12y ago2 wheels, used by 200,000 animals, which has got to be a typo, cuz thats on average 137 animals per hour.
- kryptiskt 12y ago2 wheels => 100000 animals/wheel 1000 days => 100 animals/wheel*day
- barrkel 12y ago2 wheels, 3 years, 200,000 animals is an average of 3.8 per hour.
- Someone 12y ago200,000 triggers of the animal sensors, 12,000 times that the wheel started spinning. Also: the researchers hypnotize that the slugs ended up in the wheel by accident. Some mice returned multiple times; that's a fairly good indicator that they found some benefit from it (need not be that they liked it; it's fairly easy to make up perfect direct benefits. For example, it might be that fleas jump of a mouse if it runs in a wheel for a while.
- Houshalter 12y ago
- ars 12y agoDirect links to videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5gI1joaCxI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5gI1joaCxI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNaZvGZubvw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNaZvGZubvw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KnbD1dmJzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KnbD1dmJzk Not sure why the video were wrapped in another player.
- Ygg2 12y agoI loved the slug video. In my mind the slug is making broom brroom noises as it 'speeds' along the wheel.
- gosub 12y agoStill, the experiments should put to rest the argument about whether mice in the lab are running on wheels because they live in cages—they'll do it anywhere they find one and They also put the wheel inside an enclosure with a small entranceway to keep large animals from knocking the wheel on its side
- Houshalter 12y agoThey mean because they are trapped in the cage and can't run anywhere else. Not that it's just in an enclosed area.
- hellbreakslose 12y agoWell I can see why, as the research states at the end animals enjoyed it. If we see it in a scale, it's like for us humans going on a roller coaster!
- bluerobotcat 12y agoThanks to this research I feel slightly less weird for preferring to run on a treadmill.
- smackay 12y agoThe article seems overly political in trying to refute the claim that laboratory animals run on wheels because they are driven insane by their environment. However ultimately they are undermining their position because it begs the question, "If animals like to have fun, should we really be doing experiments on them?". This is probably a lot easier to grasp by the general public than the more nebulous concept of whether animals experience emotions.
- DougBTX 12y ago> the more nebulous concept of whether animals experience emotions Is there debate about that? I suppose I took it as a given, hence all the efforts people go through to treat lab animals humanely.
- smackay 12y agoI agree this debate is already over. However I think this simplifies the issue enormously and makes it a lot more likely that general public opinion can be mustered against animal testing. If you tell the tell the future adults of this world that animals like to play and have fun then ask them whether it is right that animals are experimented on then the answer, for good or for ill, is going to be a resounding no.
- tomaskafka 12y agoWell, when you encounter a running wheel for adults along your way, you would try it too: http://www.notempire.com/images/uploads/grasswheel.jpg http://www.notempire.com/images/uploads/grasswheel.jpg ... which doesn't suggest that you would enjoy being imprisoned for life in a tiny cell where there is a, running wheel, bed, food and nothing else.
- dalke 12y agoCertainly. That would be a different study though. The hypothesis that this study investigated is: > If wheel running is indeed caused by captive housing, wild mice are not expected to use a running wheel in nature. This however, to our knowledge, has never been tested. Here, we show that when running wheels are placed in nature, they are frequently used by wild mice, also when no extrinsic reward is provided. Bout lengths of running wheel behaviour in the wild match those for captive mice. This finding falsifies one criterion for stereotypic behaviour, and suggests that running wheel activity is an elective behaviour.
- Aardwolf 12y agoI see opportunities for new ways to generate electricity :)
- gjm11 12y agoAs usual, phys.org is not exactly the best source for this. (I can't think of any occasion when phys.org has been the best source for anything.) A more informative informal summary of the research can be found at the GrrlScientist blog http://www.theguardian.com/science/grrlscientist/2014/may/21/wild-mice-exercise-wheels-behaviour-stereotypy-neurosis http://www.theguardian.com/science/grrlscientist/2014/may/21.... For those who don't mind the much drier writing style, the full text of the original scholarly article is at http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1786/20140210.full http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1786/2014... (it's quite short) and the "Data supplement" link at the right will get you the three videos of animals running on the wheel. HN submitters: When you see something cool on phys.org, before submitting it ask yourself "Can I find a better source than this for the same story?". Take two minutes -- google the title of the paper, the author's names, etc. I claim that at least 75% of the time you'll easily find something that's either substantially better or textually more or less identical but closer to the original source. Then submit that instead.
- Goladus 12y agoThe phys.org article includes the link to the original paper. How is the GrrlScientist blog better than the phys.org article? Based on a quick scan, it seems more or less equivalent to me in terms of basic journalism standards. It just looks like a different style and perspective. What, specifically, is problematic about phys.org?
- gjm11 12y agoYes, the phys.org article includes a link to the original paper. (Did I say or imply otherwise? If so, I screwed up and I apologize. I didn't mean to.) The GrrlScientist blog entry is better in (for instance) the following ways. It gives more context (e.g., Lorenz's earlier observation about formerly-captive animals running on wheels). It gives more information about the frequency of wheel-running by different kinds of animal. It is more accurate on at least one important point (article and GrrlScientist say 200k animal visits recorded of which 12k used the wheel; phys.org says 200k instances of animals using the wheel). It mentions, where phys.org doesn't, a very important finding: wheel-running continued even after the experimenters stopped putting food near the wheel, so it wasn't just that animals run on the wheel because they've found food there and think getting into the wheel will somehow provide more. It describes the article's comparison to wheel running in lab mice. On the other hand, it's also more chattily verbose, which might be a good thing or a bad according to taste. What's problematic about phys.org is that it's scarcely ever the best source for anything. Much of its content is recycled press releases, exactly the same as you can get from (usually) the website of the institution where the work was done but often with some illustrations removed and extra advertising added. Sometimes (as here) phys.org does actually write its own material, but (as here) it's usually more superficial and less informative than one can get from elsewhere. There may be cases in which the phys.org writeup is (1) not just recycled from someone else and (2) the best available account of the matter for some plausible audience. If so, I just happen never to have encountered any. [EDITED to add: I am not alone in thinking HN would be better linking to better sources than phys.org's blogspam. See, e.g., this lengthy collation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4676259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4676259. Full disclosure: some of the critical comments listed there are also mine.]
- jlhonora 12y agoHi there, If you liked this article perhaps you'll be interested in a project I've been working on. My wife has a Hedgehog (yeah, like Sonic) and he's pretty shy. He also has a wheel and runs ALL night. To feel that he interacts a little more I connected a wireless node with a magnetic switch so I could count how many laps he runs every night, and therefore the equivalent distance. Every morning he tweets how much he ran, just like RunKeeper :) Check out his twitter account here: https://twitter.com/runhedgie https://twitter.com/runhedgie And, of course, the code is hosted on github: https://github.com/jlhonora/iot https://github.com/jlhonora/iot I just finished this project yesterday, but I have many more ideas to add. I'd like to correlate running activity with temperature (hedgies are pretty sensitive to cold weather) and ambient light. I'd also like to make a public API so that anyone can analyze his activity patterns. So, stay tuned and follow!
- cm2012 12y agoYou are now the only twitter account I'm following. That's awesome.
- erikb 12y agoAt first it seemed like it would be posted automatically. But you read and interpret the data for your little friend, right?
- jlhonora 12y agoIt is totally automatic. I'm still working out the tweeting time, so some variability should be expected. The phrases are random, check the code for them here: https://github.com/jlhonora/iot/blob/master/rpi/twitter_manager.py https://github.com/jlhonora/iot/blob/master/rpi/twitter_mana... . The "mood" for the phrases depends on the ran distance. The graph I posted was generated with matplotlip and I tweeted it manually. When I finish struggling with D3 I'll put an on-demand graph with the data.
- gambiting 12y agoover 14km a day for such a small creature? That's insane.
- erikb 12y agoI wonder if the same free animal would enjoy it for a long time or if it is merely the excitement of something new.
- tinkerdol 12y agoIf they put a human-sized one of these around my residence, I'd run in it.
- thomasahle 12y agoI have one nearby, and it's great! (I can't do more than a few seconds without falling over though)
- Someone 12y agoI always thought those things were impossible to run in because the rotational inertia of the wheel is way higher than the inertia of one running in it. That requires you to run at almost constant speed (if your foot stays a bit longer on the ground, you do not decelerate the wheel much, but your feet ends up a few centimeters backwards. Repeat for two or three steps, and you lose your balance). That changed when I saw the Ukrainian entry for this year's Eurovision contest (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5DhH0jWyfk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5DhH0jWyfk). On the other hand, that wheel is smaller and likely has way less rotational inertia than the ones one finds in the typical playground, and probably also has less rolling resistance. That guy must have trained, if only to make it look effortless, but it may be easier than one would think it is.
- bsenftner 12y agoConsider the normal use of running for an animal: running for prey, running to not be prey... Yet, we know as humans that running can be enjoyable. For an animal, running is more often associated with hunger and fear of being eaten. I propose the running wheel presents to the animals a rare "place to run safely". Normally, running transports an animal into new, potentially unsafe locations. This running wheel was both in an enclosure, and the wheel itself offers protection from attack. I wager that 18 minute run was a mouse experiencing the joy of running without fear for the first time, and was exhilarated.
- ealloc 12y agoIt is my understanding that rodents run a lot while foraging. I've heard, for example, that wild hamsters run 4-10 miles at night while foraging.
- conroe64 12y agoYou presuppose the wild animal can understand a running wheel, something it never encountered before. The mice, on seeing something novel, did what that normally do and try to climb all over it looking for food. They then got stuck running on it, not realizing they were getting nowhere.
- warfangle 12y agoEgads. I tried to read the article. I really did. But it brought my chrome to its knees. Ran a quick javascript profile, and the minified function wa() was taking using 94.16%. Inspecting it, there's a for(;;){} loop that never hits a break condition. This only makes me hate phys.org even more than I used to.
- ForHackernews 12y agoI use Ghostery, and I got a message: "It appears that you are currently using Ad Blocking software. What are the consequences? Click here to learn more." But at least the page loaded. If any phys.org admins are reading this: I don't mind seeing your ads; I do object to their tracking me.
- allworknoplay 12y agoSomeone should put cubicles out in the woods and test whether random humans that come along decide to sit at them for fun.
- Shorel 12y agoNow we need to make giant wheels for dogs!