Empathy and Animals

This past Saturday, more than 250 COK supporters—including very special guests Maryland Senator Jamie Raskin,Cupcake Wars champion and owner of Sticky Fingers Sweets & Eats Doron Petersan, and COK founder Paul Shapiro—joined us to celebrate the power of compassion at our annual holiday party

In humans, the distribution of yawn contagion is shaped by social closeness with strongly bonded pairs showing higher levels of contagion than weakly bonded pairs. This ethological finding led the authors to hypothesize that the phenomenon of yawn contagion may be the result of certain empathic abilities, although in their most basal form. Here, for the first time, we show the capacity of bonobos (Pan paniscus) to respond to yawns of conspecifics.... The importance of social bonding in shaping yawn contagion in bonobos, as it occurs in humans, is consistent with the hypothesis that empathy may play a role in the modulation of this phenomenon in both species.

 

Elisa Demuru
Elisabetta Palagi 

Contagious yawning in the monkeys may have its roots in empathy, which can help coordinate the emotions of a group..

 

For bonobos, yawning is contagious, but only between friends.

Yawns spread more easily between family and close friends, and from high-status monkeys to those lower on the totem pole, according to a study published online today (Nov. 14) in the journal PLoS ONE. This pattern of social yawning mimics one found in humans and suggests infectious yawning is a byproduct of empathy, which coordinates emotions in a group.

 

by Tia Ghose,

Do you get tired when others yawn? Does your dog get tired when you yawn? New research from Sweden establishes that dogs catch yawns from humans. But not if the dogs are too young.  The study, published in Springer's journal Animal Cognition, found that, like humans, dogs show a developmental trend in susceptibility to contagious yawning. While dogs above seven months of age catch human yawns, younger dogs are immune to yawn contagion.

Does your dog yawn when you yawn? Probably. You see, according to new research published in the upcoming November edition of Animal Cognition, by Lund University in Sweden, yawning is contagious – not just for other humans but for your dog too. If your dog is older than 7 months, that is. Apparently younger dogs are immune to yawn contagion. Researchers haven’t quite figured that out yet, but research suggests that it may be related to empathy.

We've always known dogs are a mans best friend, now one study backs up the claim... The study from Goldsmith’s University in London looked at how dogs reacted to humans in distress… the results? Dogs expressed empathic behavior towards people who seemed upset by approaching them more often than people who were not in distress.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama took part in the launch of Humane Society International’s India office and World Compassion Day in India.

 

During the launch of Human Society International’s India office, His Holiness the Dalai Lama spoke of human responsibility to protect animals from human-caused cruelty and show compassion. “Animals deserve our compassion. We must know their pain. We should nurture this compassion through education.

 

 

Showing concern about animal rights is respecting their life,” said His Holiness to an audience of about 200 people. Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States, remarked that the Dalai Lama’s presence “provides an emotional and spiritual lift to our efforts to elevate animal-welfare campaigns and activities in the subcontinent of India.”

 

By Kimberly Budziak

 

That is where empathy and sympathy start—with the synchronization of bodies—not in the higher regions of imagination, or in the ability to consciously reconstruct how we would feel if we were in someone else’s “shoes.” And yet empathy is often presented as a voluntary process, requiring role taking, higher cognition, and even language. Accordingly, most scholarly literature on empathy is completely human centered, never mentioning other animals. As if a capacity so visceral and pervasive could be anything other than biological! To counter such widespread views, I decided to investigate how chimpanzees relate to and learn from one another.

 

By Frans de Waal

The Evolution of Empathy
In ancient Indian Hindu Vedic scriptures, there is the observation that life in a rock is life that sleeps; life in a plant is life that feels; life in an animal is life that knows, and life in human form is life that knows that it knows.

 

Animals have self-awareness through feeling and so possess self-consciousness to varying degrees according to the combined effects of social and neuronal complexity. This complexity becomes such that the human species, perhaps more so than most other animal species, has a reflexive consciousness in that awareness of the personal self is seen within an ever-widening comprehension of its relationship with the Great or Universal Self. Our empathic and empirical knowledge of the nature of sacredness and the sacredness of Nature increase accordingly. As the individuated self evolves along the continuum of increasing complexity/ consciousness, it becomes reflexive and thus increasingly aware of its ontology in relation to the Universal self: of being within Being.

 

by Dr. Michael W. Fox

Yawns aren't contagious to puppies, but they are for grown-up doggies.

 

Contagious yawning is important because it may indicate empathy, a trait that is contested in non-human animals. Lund University researchers Elainie Alenkaer Madsen and Tomas Persson wanted to find out if empathy is at the bottom of canine yawning.

They tested 35 ordinary pet dogs, ages 4 months to 14 months. Puppies were chosen because in humans, empathetic abilities develop over time.

 

Stephanie Pappas

Empathy, a sensitivity to the emotional responses of others, is difficult to measure directly, but contagious yawning allows assessment of a behavioural empathetic response, the researchers say.

 

Puppies can't catch yawns but older dogs do, according to new research that suggests that the animals' remarkable sense of empathy develops as they mature.
Contagious yawning is not just a sign of sleepiness or boredom. Previous research has shown the behaviour in humans, adult chimpanzees, baboons and dogs, and suggests that it can be used as a measure of empathy

 

By DAMIEN GAYLE

 

Dogs catch contagious yawns just like people, baboons and chimps, which can be used as a measure of empathy. But this is a behavior they learn after they emerge from youngest puppyhood, a new study says. Like people, young dogs show a developmental trend in their likelihood of catching yawns. This is the first time anyone has studied young-organism yawning in a species other than people.

Anyone who owns a dog knows you can catch a yawn from your pet, and vice versa. My dog, a 5-year-old border collie rescue, has this piercing yawn-peak squeal and head shiver that literally makes it impossible not to catch it. And I have seen her watching me, yawning after I do.

 

By Rebecca Boyle