Rats can demonstrate behaviors such as revival to help peers with unconscious cages.
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Lee Zhang has anesthetized a lot of mice in his research career.
Many years ago, neuroscientist at the University of Southern California began to note that sometimes, when he placed an anesthetic mouse back into his cage, his cage partner strangely strangely around the face of the unconscious mouse. Started acting from, smelling and cutting. For Zhang, it seemed almost that it seemed that the mouse was trying to revive his knock-out partner with something like the first aid.
Such behavior is seen in other species, in other species such as elephants or dolphins that help disable up group members. Zhang says, while other mouse researchers have seen the same behavior towards unconscious mice, it has never been closely studied.
Now, he and his colleagues suggest that unconscious mice made a suit of behavior with the cage companions that accelerate recovery from anesthesia. Oxytocin neurons, which help help in behavior in a range of species, help to activate behavior such as revival in mice, researchers reported in the journal Science,
“For me, it looks like a behavior, which I would call a philanthropic impulse,” says James Burcate, a neuroscientist at the University of Toledo. “We cannot guess from our comments that these mice intend to help. We only know that they are answering in the need of an animal and they behave a behavior that benefits them. “
Zhang and his colleagues studied this behavior by introducing an unconscious cage companion and an active mouse. He found that the subject mouse spent too much time in interaction with the unconscious cage partner, which performs a consistent set of behaviors with time.
First of all, the mouse would just smell and glow to the friend of his knocking cage. But as the mouse remained unanswered, the subject mouse will start cutting its partner’s mouth, and even will remove its tongue.
“It seems that the mouse, intentionally, can perform this full set of behavior,” says Huizong Whit Tao, a neuroscientist of USC and studies co-author. Those behaviors should be comfortable, called Whit Tao, because these mice had never had the opportunity to learn, never faced the unconscious mouse before. “This is the first time we have reported this type of emergency reactions from animals.”
Reactions such as these emergency were also directed to dead mice, but rarely to active or even sleeping mice. Unlike strangers, mice were more likely to spring in action for familiar mice.
“This familiar prejudice tells you that the animal is not responding to the stimulus in a genuine manner that they are seeing,” says Barkat. “They actually take into account aspects of the situation and aspects of the animal identifying when they are making their reaction.”
Is “first aid” really helping?
All poking and production paid for unconscious mice, as it increases their recovery from anesthesia to some extent. Drawing the tongue was particularly powerful, as researchers found that it expanded the airways of unconscious mice. The team also placed small objects in the mouth of the unconscious animal, disliked the tongue.
Whit Tao says, “This was the most surprising part of the study.” “Apparently effects are beneficial.”
It shows that mice intend to help, clearly it is difficult to show that unconscious mice are helped, saying Pagi Mason, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago, says, who were not involved in the study.
“If I drop $ 20, accidentally, on the road and someone else picks it up, the person has been helped, but I have not helped them,” says Mason. “They found a great behavior, I do not dispute it. I dispute its interpretation.”
An alternative interpretation is that mice are more curious about only a non -existent mouse, which are immersed in their cage, especially if they know them. To test for this possibility, researchers repeated their experiment in five days. If the curiosity was a motivational power, you will expect that the time will decrease in behavior with the passage of time, as white Tao says, as the innovation stops.
“However, we saw the opposite,” she says. “There is no shortage in behavior, there is a slight increase.”
Mason remains unrelated, suggesting that it may take longer to get into a habit. On the other hand, Barkat, thinking that researchers have shown that this is not just curiosity, especially when taking into account the neurobiological findings of the study.
Researchers found that oxytocin circuits in the brain were important in activating behaviors such as revival. Berket says that oxytocin helps to help in behavior in different types of species, something similar suggestions. “This was a part of the really well done study that shows that it is entangling the social behavior network in the brain,” they say, although it deliberately emphasizes that these consequences may not be necessary.
Given that oxytocin circuits that help produce this congenital, “first-aid-like” behavior is broad in the animal empire, Zhang and White Tao suspect that such behavior may also be widespread, their Given the possible advantage.
“It remains to be seen,” says Berket. Nevertheless, the study suggests that “the animals are attached to the feelings and behaviors of others around them, which is very rich in compared to already felt.”
