All Sections, Empathy and: Animals, Art, Compassion, Education, Empaths, Health Care, Learning, Justice, Teaching, Work, Self-empathy, Self-compassion, etc
Please Click 'Follow' to receive updates. It also helps us rise in the rankings and gives us more exposure on Scoop.it. Join the Cause: Help Teach Empathy for Animals! STOP Abuse, Beatings, Cruelty, Fighting, Suffering & Torture. http://Causes.com/EmpathyForAnimals Thanks so much. Edwin Rutsch, Editor http://CultureOfEmpathy.com 
One sleepy person can start a bout of contagious yawning that quickly spreads through a room. But a new study suggests the effect may not be limited to the room’s human inhabitants: Dogs can “catch” yawns from people, the study found—especially their owners, hinting that pooches may empathize with familiar people. 
Have you tried yawning next to your dog? Have you noticed your little pal yawning after you did? Yes, yawning is a contagious behavior but not all species in the animal kingdom gets affected with it. However, dogs are an exception, just like the gelada baboons, stump-tail macaques, and chimpanzees that also yawn.
In fact, a new research found out that everytime dogs hear the sound of his master yawning, they will also yawn. This behavior is now considered as the strongest proof that dogs can relate to what humans feel. 
A new study shows that dogs can "catch" a yawn from the sound of a human being yawning. The study showed that dogs imitate yawns more readily from their owners than from strangers. Researchers say this suggests dogs have the capacity for empathy....
The latest study to be published in the July 2012 edition of Animal Cognition, was designed to test whether the phenomenon of contagious yawning between humans and dogs could be linked to empathy. Researchers reasoned that if dogs can catch a yawn from a human by simply listening to the recorded sound of a human yawning, without physically seeing the person, then it is likely that the phenomenon is an indication of empathy.
By JohnThomas Didymus 
Yawn next to your dog, and she may do the same. Though it seems simple, this contagious behavior is actually quite remarkable: Only a few animals do it, and only dogs cross the species barrier. Now a new study finds that dogs yawn even when they only hear the sound of us yawning, the strongest evidence yet that canines may be able to empathize with us. 
Emory University researchers have begun a project to scan the brains of alert dogs using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and see how they react to hand signals from their owners.
The aim is to understand dogs' thinking by recording which areas of their brains are activated when they interact with humans. Ultimately, the team hopes to answer questions such as whether dogs have empathy, and how much language they really understand. 
Gene Baur is the president and co-founder of Farm Sanctuary, an organization whose mission is to promote compassionate living through the rescue of farm animals, education and advocacy. A vegan since 1985, Baur has been called “the conscience of the food movement. “Farm animals, like all animals, have feelings,” Baur says. “They have complex cognitive abilities… and they deserve to be treated with respect and compassion.”
Frans de Waal knows about chimpanzees. He has been studying primate behavior since 1975, and he currently serves as the C. H. Candler Professor of Psychology at Emory University and Director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. He has written numerous books about primates, and his most recent book,The Age of Empathy, explores the evolutionary origins of morality, empathy, and emotions.
As we learn more about our animal kin, the issue of medical experimentation becomes more contentious, especially regarding chimpanzees and other primates. 
While those in the world of mindfulness may be well aware, that empathy toward others is a recipe for a feeling of well being within oneself, for many people, just how to increase a sense of empathy can be a challenging subject.
This, of course is complicated when many people struggle with feeling empathetic toward others. To be sure, when empathy isn’t expressed, it isn’t gained either. So if this is the case, how does one go about increasing empathy? And, further, is it possible that animals, namely horses, can help us to feel more empathetic toward one another?
Domestic animals may be frequently exposed to situations in which they witness the distress or pain of conspecifics and the extent to which they are affected by this will depend on their capacity for empathy. Empathy encompasses two partially distinct sets of processes concerned with the emotional and cognitive systems.
The term, empathy, is therefore used to describe both relatively simple processes, such as physiological and behavioural matching; and more complex interactions between emotional and cognitive perspective taking systems.
Most previous attempts to measure empathic responsiveness in animals have not distinguished between responses primarily relevant to the situation of the observer and those primarily relevant to the situation of the conspecific. Only the latter can be considered empathic.
by J.L. Edgar, , C.J. Nicol, C.C.A. Clark, E.S. Paul 
While those in the world of midfulness may be well aware that empathy toward others is a recipe for a feeling of wellbeing within oneself, for many people, just how to increase a sense of empathy can be a challenging subject. This, of course is complicated when many people struggle with feeling empathetic towad others.
To be sure, when empathy isn’t expressed, it isn’t gained either. So if this is the case, how does one go about increasing empathy? And, further, is it possible that animals, namely horses, can help us to feel more empatheic toward one another?...
So now, let’s take a look at how horses may help us increase empathy... we know that interaction with animals also increases oxytocin, and particularly in the case of horses, mutual understanding....
By CLAIRE DOROTIK 
Narrator: This is Science Today. Emotional differences between the rich and the poor may be more than just in the eye of the beholder. A new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, found that people in lower socio-economic classes are more attuned to the suffering of others, and quicker to express compassion than their upper-class counterparts.
Stellar: Participants of the lower social class were noticing more distress in their partners, so they were picking up signals that the person was stressed, which is going to promote a compassionate response.
Narrator: Graduate student Jennifer Stellar, who led the study, says it's not that the upper classes are coldhearted; they may just be less adept at recognizing the cues and signals of suffering because they haven't had to deal with as many obstacles in their lives. 
Memorial for Chimpanzees Abused in Early Space Program Would Bolster Legislative Effort to Have Their Kin Released From U.S. Labs Today
As PETA explains in its letter, the Chimpanzee Empathy Museum would highlight how many relatives of the space program's chimpanzees are still locked up in laboratories across the country. The museum would also urge visitors to call their legislators in support of the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act, which is backed by more than 160 senators and representatives as well as actors Woody Harrelson, Ellen DeGeneres, and Alec Baldwin.
The act would permanently end the use of chimpanzees and all other great apes in invasive experiments, retire federally owned apes to sanctuaries, and save taxpayers millions of dollars a year.
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Researchers have uncovered rare brain cells in monkeys, which can be tied to self-awareness and empathy in humans.
Max Planck scientists found that the anterior insular cortex is a small brain region that plays a crucial role in human self-awareness and in related neuropsychiatric disorders. An exclusive cell type – the Von Economo Neuron (VEN) – is located there. 
Dogs yawn when they hear people yawn, which suggests that canines may empathize with humans.
On average, canines yawned five times more often when they heard humans they knew yawning as opposed to control sounds. “These results suggest that dogs have the capacity to empathize with humans,” says Silva. 
Do you ever notice that when you yawn, those who are around you tend to yawn as well? And vice versa? Well that contagious expression even crosses the species barrier, as dogs are also capable of catching yawns from humans.
But why dogs catch our yawns has been a mystery, until now. A new study has found that dogs yawn even when they only hear the sound of us yawning, the strongest evidence yet that our canine companions may be able to understand us. The study, presented at the National Ethology Congress in Lisbon, and to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Animal Cognition, found that nearly half of all dogs yawned when played a recording of a human being making such a noise.
Source: Lawrence LeBlond 
Dogs are compelled to yawn if they hear their owners do the same, a study has suggested.
Researchers claimed that dogs responded only to an audio cue such as a yawn even if they didn’t see the action taking place. The study found this was particularly noticeable when the dogs were listening to the yawns of people they knew.
Dogs can 'catch' yawns from humans - but it seems to work best when there's a bond between dog and man. Dogs yawn even when they only hear the sound of their owners doing the same, researchers have found.
In her report behavioral biologist Karine Silva, the lead researcher, said: ‘These results suggest that dogs have the capacity to empathise with humans’.
By ROB WAUGH 
The researchers aim to decode the mental processes of dogs by recording which areas of their brains are activated by various stimuli. Ultimately, they hope to get at questions like: Do dogs have empathy? Do they know when their owners are happy or sad? How much language do they really understand? 
Does your dog understand when you are happy or sad? Well, it seems so, as they are found paying very close attention to their masters’ moods, scientists say. Researcher at the Emory University Centre for Neuropolicy used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to look at the brain activities of an active dog and found some of them pay very close attention to their owners.
Children can learn so many valuable lessons by caring for a pet.
Having pets also teaches children that animals are not expendable items. If children are involved in the daily care of animals, it can help to make them a more compassionate person later in life. Over the years I have been able to follow kids who first owned pets in elementary school as they grow up through high school, and I have seen them grow up to be compassionate young adults.
On the other hand, kids that don’t get the experience of having a pet early may become afraid of animals, especially if their parents don’t particularly care for animals. But even parents who aren’t crazy about pets or did not own them as kids can help change this trend.
by Dr. Tim Hunt 
Some children are intuitively compassionate and empathetic, even in a competitive society where these virtues are often not celebrated or encouraged.
Compassion and empathy are characteristics of nurturing behaviour. Providing a place where kids, especially boys, can demonstrate nurturing behaviour towards other living beings is part of what makes the BC SPCA Among Animals summer camps unique. Kids will have opportunities to explore the needs of companion animals, farm animals and wildlife.
SCHOOL BREAK & HOLIDAY ANIMAL CAMPS
Whether from hubris or insecurity, humans like to view our species as the crown of creation, beings beyond compare in the animal kingdom, as if our advanced cognitive and behavioral skills appeared de novo with the emergence of the Homo lineage. Few have done more to demonstrate the folly of such an anthropocentric view than Frans de Waal. 
I admit that I am probably too empathetic. I know the science and the biology, and yet I still anthropomorphize and cast human emotions on living things that may not have them...
Empathy is “an affective response, more appropriate to another’s situation than one’s own.” Translated, the ability to imagine one’s self in a position of another and genuinely feel what he is feeling. The study, in a nutshell, said that if you want to encourage people to care about something outside their immediate world, you need to foster empathy toward other living things, and that this is largely a role that nature educators should play...
by Jennifer Schlick 
Like people, chickens are social animals who like company. They also establish a hierarchy within the flock, commonly referred to as the "pecking order," which can lead to bullying and brutal treatment, and the eventual isolation of the victim...
The purpose of the program is to help students to understand the severity of the social trauma that bullying can cause, and to help close the "empathy gap" that often leads to a lack of support for victims of teasing, ostracism, harassment and physical intimidation.
By Dina Samfield
An animal rights group wants to rent a prison building the state plans to close and turn it into the nation's first chicken empathy museum.
A People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals official sent a letter today to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine asking to rent the Botetourt Correctional Center building in Troutville. |
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