Prairie voles seem to console their distraught cage-mates — a behaviour previously seen only in humans and in other animals with advanced cognition, such as great apes and elephants.
James Burkett, Larry Young and their colleagues at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, separated pairs of prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster; pictured) in the lab and measured how long the rodents groomed each other when they were reunited. Voles spent significantly more time grooming partners that had been subjected to noise and mild electric shocks during the separation period, even though they had not observed the stressful event.
The unstressed voles showed the same levels of stress hormones as their stressed cage-mates. This response disappeared when the researchers chemically blocked the brain receptor for oxytocin, a hormone involved in empathy in humans.
Further research on this consolation behaviour in rodents could yield insight into certain psychiatric disorders that involve a lack of empathy, the authors say.
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Voles console stressed friends. Nature 529, 441 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/529441d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/529441d
