According to a new study by European researchers, meat-eaters have less empathy—for both animals and people—than vegetarians and vegans do. The researchers recruited 60 volunteers—20 meat-eaters, 21 vegans, and 19 vegetarians—and placed them into an MRI machine while showing them a series of random pictures.
The MRI scans revealed that, when observing animal or human suffering, the “empathy-related” areas of the brain are more active among vegetarians and vegans. The researchers even found that there are certain brain areas that only vegans and vegetarians seem to activate when witnessing suffering—animal or human. The vegetarians and vegans also scored significantly higher on an empathy quotient questionnaire than the meat-eaters did.
I have never understood why when I explain to someone why I choose not to eat animals, their responses are commonly aggressive. This study, however, describes why it might be the case.
Recognizing we would be most effective working together, the Seattle Aquarium, Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium, and Woodland Park Zoo launched Measuring Empathy: the Collaborative Assessment Project (MECAP). This grant-funded partnership aimed to create a collective understanding of the best practices for building and measuring empathy at zoos and aquariums. Over the two-year project, we set out to answer some of our most pressing questions:
What is empathy in the context of zoos and aquariums, and how does it differ from other emotional connections with nature? How can we make empathy-related work more specific, intentional and effective, both within and across our institutions? How do we know that we’re being successful in building empathy towards wildlife among our visitors?
Many dogs show empathy if their owner is in distress and will also try to help rescue them. This is according to Emily M. Sanford, formerly of Macalester College and now at Johns Hopkins University in the US. She is the lead author of a study in Springer’s journal Learning and Behavior that tested whether there is truth in the notion that dogs have a prosocial and empathetic nature. Interesting to note, the study found that dogs specially trained for visitations as therapy dogs are just as likely to help as other dogs.
In one of their experiments, Sanford and her colleagues instructed the owners of 34 dogs to either give distressed cries or to hum while sitting behind a see-through closed door. Sixteen of these dogs were registered therapy dogs. The researchers watched what the dogs did, and also measured their heart rate variability to see how they physically reacted to the situation. In another part of the experiment, the researchers examined how these same dogs gazed at their owners to measure the strength of their relationship.
many dogs show empathy if their owner is in danger and also try to help rescue them. The study, therefore, provides evidence that dogs not only feel empathy toward people, but in some cases also act on that empathy.
Researchers observed the dogs' responses and measured their heart rates. In a followup experiment, researchers analyzed how dogs looked at their owners to gauge the strength of their relationship.
The results showed dogs were equally likely to open the door in response to both crying and humming. However, dogs opened the door more quickly when reacting to their owners' cries. Dogs with lower stress responses to crying were more likely to open the door and open it quickly.
Researchers also found dogs with the strongest bond with their owners were more faster to open the door.
Koko was a primary ambassador for her endangered species and touched the lives of millions. She taught the world that communication and empathy between species is possible.
“She was beloved and will be deeply missed,” The Gorilla Foundation said. “Koko’s capacity for language and empathy has opened the minds and hearts of millions.”
Destination Empathy let children navigate the golden rule with the help of a fish, elephant, insects and others—whether they spoke the same language or different, have hands or paws, dark skin or light, fur or feathers.
PETA's mission statement is that animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way: http://www.peta.org/about-peta/
An outspoken animal rights group wants the Maine farmhouse of late children’s book author E.B. White to be converted into a “pig empathy museum.”
White’s book “Charlotte’s Web” is about farm animals who talk to each other and prominently features a pig named Wilbur. The 1952 book is one of the bestselling children’s books of all time and has been the source material for multiple feature-length movies in the decades since its release.
The PETA Empathy Center—located in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles and just down the road from the Bob Barker Building, PETA’s West Coast headquarters—will host a variety of events geared toward teaching the values of justice, respect, understanding, and compassion for all living beings, regardless of race, religion, ability, gender, or specie
Do animals show empathy? Are there any signs of morality in animal societies? Can a monkey distinguish right from wrong? And what are the standards of what is right and what is not? Does morality evolve in time both for human societies and animal societies?
It is hard to imagine that empathy—a characteristic so basic to the human species that it emerges early in life, and is accompanied by strong physiological reactions—came into existence only when our lineage split off from that of the apes. It must be far older than that. Examples of empathy in other animals would suggest a long evolutionary history to this capacity in humans.
Over the last several decades, we’ve seen increasing evidence of empathy in other species. Emotions suffuse much of the language employed by students of animal behavior -- from "social bonding" to "alarm calls" -- yet are often avoided as explicit topic in scientific discourse.
Duke researchers tracked how signals ping back and forth within the brain during empathic decision-making in rats.
By combining electrical monitoring of neural activity with machine learning, a team of neuroscientists has tuned into the brain chatter of rats engaged in helping other rats. The results clarify earlier conflicting findings on the role of specific brain regions, such as the insula, in guiding antisocial and psychopathic behavior, and may shed light on how to encourage altruistic behavior in humans.
Jana Schaich Borg, Sanvesh Srivastava, Lizhen Lin, Joseph Heffner, David Dunson, Kafui Dzirasa, Luis de Lecea. Rat intersubjective decisions are encoded by frequency-specific oscillatory contexts. Brain and Behavior, 2017; 7 (6): e00710 DOI: 10.1002/brb3.710
To launch this project, Woodland Park Zoo is hosting a symposium January 22 - 24, 2019 in Seattle, WA to bring together experts in a range of topics (animal welfare, behavioral psychology, empathy, conservation) with representatives from zoos and aquariums from across the country.
The symposium will:
Provide introduction and training to the previous work done by the Empathy Initiative, Facilitate discussion about animal welfare and the perception of welfare,
Provide continuous learning for interested organizations.
Issues of mental health, well-being, and suicide among vets are important ones that veterinary organizations worldwide have made a priority.
I understand that the stresses our equine vets face are just a piece of the puzzle, but it’s a valuable piece. As several of my sources for the feature story said, owners need not feel responsible for their vets’ mental health or well-being. But a little effort to understand the professionals who care for our horses, a little perspective, a little empathy, never hurt anyone.
Find more about Science and Cocktails, and awesome science talks at Do animals show empathy?
Are there any signs of morality in animal societies?
Can a monkey. Empathy, cooperation, fairness and reciprocity -- caring about the well-being of others seems like a very human trait.
But Frans de Waal shares some surprising videos of. Science journalist Lone Frank speaks with professor Frans de Waal, who is doing research into non-human animals and non-human animal behaviour at Emory University i Atlanta, Georgia, among.
What happens when you pay two monkeys unequally? Watch what happens. An excerpt from the TED Talk: "Frans de Waal: Moral behavior in animals." Watch the whole talk here:
Dogs were found to be more emotionally attuned to their owners and would rush to comfort them when the animals sense something is wrong.
A study on this behavior, titled “Timmy’s in the well: Empathy and prosocial helping in dogs,” was published in the journal Learning and Behavior. The researchers observed how dogs would react if their owners exhibited signs of distress.
During their experiments, dogs were placed in an enclosure with a clear glass door. The researchers measured how the animals would react after seeing and hearing their owners through the door. The dogs could also go to their master through the magnetized door. The researchers found half of the dogs would approach their respective owners immediately upon seeing them through a clear glass door. However, they also found the dogs would rush to their owners three times faster when they hear crying.
Dogs are fantastic. I could probably write an entire novel up top here about how great dogs are. On a scale of 1 to 10, dogs are 2,000. Did you know dogs have a sense of time? Dogs are so insanely, unequivocally cool, that—(It is at this point that Editor-in-chief Orion Jones interrupts your correspondent here, writer Ned Dymoke, and tells him to keep things moving.)
A recent study from the journal Learning and Behavior shows that dogs both feel and act upon empathy.
The legendary primatologist reflects on primates’ capacity for tender loving care.
Biologist Frans de Waal studies the complex emotional life of apes—including how chimpanzees resolve conflicts. Here, de Waal discusses his subjects’ true capacity for fairness, reciprocity, and empathy, and how human beings measure up.
There have been many studies showing that animals (e.g. rodents, birds, chimps) experience distress or concern (empathic response) when observing either kin or non-kin in distress. For example, giving electric shocks to rats and pigeons.
The observer experienced a change both behaviourally and physiologically, and these responses are often considered as an experience of emotional contagion, an elementary form of empathy. Emotional contagion is essentially the spreading of all forms of emotion from one person (or animal) to another (like the spreading of joy or distress through a crowd - think of a flash mob dance effect filtering through a crowd)2.
Contrary to popular belief, having a dog or cat in the home does not improve the mental or physical health of children, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
The findings, published online by the journal Anthrozoos, are from the largest-ever study to explore the belief that pets can improve children’s health by increasing physical activity and strengthen young people’s empathy skills.
“We could not find evidence that children from families with dogs or cats are better off either in terms of their mental well-being or their physical health,” said Layla Parast, a co-author of the study and a statistician at RAND, a nonprofit research organization.
Although signs of empathy have now been well documented in non-human primates, only during the past few years have systematic observations suggested that a primal form of empathy exists in rodents. Thus, the study of empathy in animals has started in earnest.
Here we review recent studies indicating that rodents are able to share states of fear, and highlight how affective neuroscience approaches to the study of primary-process emotional systems can help to delineate how primal empathy is constituted in mammalian brains.
Cross-species evolutionary approaches to understanding the neural circuitry of emotional ‘contagion’ or ‘resonance’ between nearby animals, together with the underlying neurochemistries, may help to clarify the origins of human empathy.
In a study recently published in Animal Cognition, dogs displayed emotional contagion after hearing negative emotional sounds from humans and other dogs. This was the first study on canine empathy to compare dogs’ behavioral responses to negative and positive emotional sounds, “[increasing] our knowledge on animal emotions and behavior,” the investigators wrote.
Empathy is the ability to recognize and share another individual’s emotions. Emotional contagion is a social phenomenon, previously defined as “an automatic and unconscious emotional state-matching between two individuals.” Various species, including primates and rodents, can demonstrate emotional contagion. Notably, dogs exhibit intraspecies and interspecies emotional contagion, making them an ideal model to study this concept.
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