Mice perform 'first aid' to revive their stricken companions

Mice perform 'first aid' to revive their stricken companions(thetimes.com)

13 points by mrcode007 1 year ago | 6 comments

OgsyedIE 1 year ago |

It's reasonably easy to see any herbivore receiving a fitness advantage for evolving this trait, since they are more likely to use it on close kin with whom they share a fraction of their genes than on any unrelated conspecific.

It's interesting, however, to see that the small brain size of mice is still enough to support it. I suspect it has something to do with the hypothalamus/whole brain size ratio.

Since rodents have been established to be capable of experiencing entrained trauma responses (stress hormones, hypervigilance, disturbed sleep habits, reduced sociality and panic behavior to audio triggers) and the OP establishes non-parental caregiving behavior, the combination of the two suggest it's likely that they can feel some version of guilt, shame or grief in the instances where their resuscitation reflex is unsuccessful.

snackbroken 1 year ago | |

Ants exhibit rather complex first-aid behavior in response to wounded nest-mates (amputating mangled limbs, coating wounds in anti-microbial secretions, carrying the victim off to safety, feeding the wounded ant while it recuperates) so it shouldn't be all that surprising that the comparatively huge brains of mice are capable of similar pro-social behaviors. The inner emotional lives of mice are as you say likely to be much richer than the average person gives them credit for.

OgsyedIE 1 year ago | | |

If the lives of nematodes are rich enough to experience a PTSD-analogue, young honeybees can play with balls and fruit flies enclosed in a glass box can vary their flying behavior in a way that is inconsistent with confusion and consistent with boredom, who knows where the limit is. I once saw a paper that argued the middle germ layer of placozoans might support a rudimentary neural network encoded in glutamate-GABA gradients instead of neurons (since they don't have neurons) that could carry out aversion behavior coordination across the entire placozoan body.

gnabgib 1 year ago |

There wasn't much, but small discussion (39 points, 5 days ago, 3 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43261947

Papers:

A neural basis for prosocial behavior toward unresponsive individuals https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq2679

Reviving-like prosocial behavior in response to unconscious or dead conspecifics in rodents https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq2677

An innate drive to save a life https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adv3731

mrcode007 1 year ago | |

I think it’s a different paper?

An innate drive to save a life https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adv3731?url_ver=...

gnabgib 1 year ago | | |

I don't see a link to that in this article? The previous article linked all three - I've updated (but the first was prioritised in the body of that post)

In this Times piece, a study author, interviewed by NPR, was part of the paper: Reviving-like prosocial behavior in response to unconscious or dead conspecifics in rodents https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq2677

It's strange all three papers have different authors from different edus (colorado.edu, ecla.edu, NIH, esc.edu)