Empathy and Animals

by NED DYMOKE

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.

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.

Pets DON'T boost your child's health, claim 'surprised' researchers behind the findings of the biggest study yet

• The largest study on the topic as of yet has dismissed the widely-held theory 
• Researchers behind the findings claim there to be 'no evidence' of any such links
• Instead, family income, language skills and housing play more important roles

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.

 Jaak Panksepp

 Jules B. Panksepp

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.

By JoAnna Pendergrass 

Here are three ways that pets help with emotional development in children:

1. Teaches responsibility...
2.  Helps cultivate empathy.
   Kids are inherently focused on their own needs, so having to take to care for a pet will teach them to focus on the needs of others...

1. Develops compassion...
2. + Increases emotional intelligence 
3. + Think of others instead of just self.

Overview

Summary:  Some of the benefits of children having pets.

Benefits:

  * focus on the feelings of others...

  * Learn to read no verbal feelings

Training:
* Just having a pet trains kids in empathy skills

Author: Waldo 

• Researchers looked at surveillance footage of 22 commercial robberies 
• They examined what factors affected whether people offered support to victims
• Social closeness was found to be more important than physical proximity 
• And the behaviour demonstrated was found to be similar to that of chimps

Offering hugs and friendly touches to soothe victims of violence seems to be a primal instinct inherited from our primate ancestors.

That's the finding of a new study that has documented this behaviour scientifically in human adults for the first time.

The research has found that chimps and humans console victims of violence in remarkably similar ways. And the cause in both cases is a sense of empathy that is shared by people and great apes, according to the researchers.

By TIM COLLINS FOR MAILONLINE

Post-aggression consolation is assumed to occur in humans as well as in chimpanzees. While consolation following peer aggression has been observed in children, systematic evidence of consolation in human adults is rare. We used surveillance camera footage of the immediate aftermath of nonfatal robberies to observe the behaviors and characteristics of victims and bystanders.

Consistent with empathy explanations, we found that consolation was linked to social closeness rather than physical closeness. While females were more likely to console than males, males and females were equally likely to be consoled.

Furthermore, we show that high levels of threat during the robbery increased the likelihood of receiving consolation afterwards. These patterns resemble post-aggression consolation in chimpanzees and suggest that emotions of empathic concern are involved in consolation across humans and chimpanzees.

 Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard, Lasse Suonperä Liebst, Wim Bernasco, Marie Bruvik Heinskou, Richard Philpot, Mark Levine, Peter Verbeek.

Empathy has long been considered a uniquely human trait, but it's an ability that has also been observed in apes and other animals. Primatologist Frans de Waal says that examples of empathy in non-human primates and other mammals suggest that empathy has a long evolutionary history in humans.

Frans de Waal is the C.H. Candler Professor of Psychology at Emory University where he directs the Living Links Center for the Advanced Study of Ape and Human Evolution. He’s the author of several books including The Age of Empathy, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

See how monkeys teach manners, elephants show empathy and ants imitate water in ScienceTake, combining cutting-edge research from the world of science with stunning footage of the natural world in action.

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.”

• Research suggests we are moved the most by suffering of puppies and children
• Respondents were significantly less distressed when adults were victimised
• Dogs are regarded as vulnerable like their younger canine counterparts and kids

It seems humans are more moved by the suffering of dogs than people, according to a study.

In new research, scientists described a report about an attack 'with a baseball bat by an unknown assailant' and each time the victim changed.

The study found we are moved the most by the suffering of puppies and children, but battered dogs elicited more empathy than abused humans.

Scientists say this may be because animals are more helpless than humans and less able to defend themselves. 

By Phoebe Weston For Mailonline

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

Here are five ways in which pets can help children develop their EQ. 

References: 

Yesterday there was a horrific car accident just steps from my home. Upon hearing the sound of the crash, several neighbours ran to the street to make sure everyone was okay. As several ambulance arrived, and we caught a glimpse of the situation, many of us began to gasp. Looking over at my friend, I saw she was crying.

Though my friend did not know the victims, she was clearly affected. My reaction was to hug her, and keep hugging her as we both felt this innate worry and sadness for the victims of the crash.

This instance — of consoling, and of empathy — would later remind me of a recent study Marie Lindegaard, a scientist at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, led.

 ALEXA ERICKSON

JUNE 14, 2017

Like chimpanzees, humans may console their threatened peers out of empathy, according to a study published May 31, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard from the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), The Netherlands, and the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and colleagues.

Consolation is generally defined as an uninvolved bystander initiating friendly contact with a victim of aggression. Previous research has suggested that children and chimpanzees console their peers, but there is little research on consolation in human adults.

His findings support research that shows that dogs understand concepts of empathy and inequality. As dog guardians can attest, dogs will lick or nuzzle humans or other animals who are crying or hurting, demonstrating an ability to read and understand emotions, even in different species, to empathize, and to try to help.

Show dogs that you, too, understand fairness, inequality, and empathy. Give them plenty of playtime, exercise, socialization, and affection, and adopt—don’t shop.

We’ve all heard it before: Dogs are man’s best friend. They are extremely loyal, loving, and sensitive, always seeming to know when you need some cheering up. Well, a new study shows that they do in fact know when you are feeling down, or happy, or any other emotion, because they have the ability to read human emotion. They do this through interpreting various stimuli, such as visual and auditory cues, and they are the only creatures aside from humans that have been shown to have this ability...

It was found that dogs are also able to imitate each other’s expressions, which shows that they have the capacity for empathy as well