i can’t understand ppl who hate rats. “their tails are creepy!! there’s no fur on them!!!” ??? you don’t have fur on most of your creepy ass body either. “THEY HAVE LITTLE PEOPLE HANDS” YOU HAVE LITTLE PEOPLE HANDS TOO, stop hating. you’re weak. look at their sweet faces. they just want to love u.
Rats are so easy to please. I shoved some sweet potato into cardboard toilet paper tubes, packed in with shredded paper towels. At first they were just excited about the paper towel shreds and started making a nest, then they found the sweet potato and lost their minds. Like they couldn’t believe what a good and gracious world they lived in that there could be sweet potato and paper towel at the same time.
In a simple experiment, researchers at the University of Chicago sought to find out whether a rat would release a fellow rat from an unpleasantly restrictive cage if it could. The answer was yes.
The free rat, occasionally hearing distress calls from its compatriot, learned to open the cage and did so with greater efficiency over time. It would release the other animal even if there wasn’t the payoff of a reunion with it. Astonishingly, if given access to a small hoard of chocolate chips, the free rat would usually save at least one treat for the captive — which is a lot to expect of a rat.
The researchers came to the unavoidable conclusion that what they were seeing was empathy — and apparently selfless behavior driven by that mental state.
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