New research has confirmed what animal researchers have long denied: mice – the most exploited nonhuman animals in research – act on empathy . . . while animal researchers do not.
Findings from three separate studies revealed that mice instinctively attempt to resuscitate unresponsive cagemates by grooming them, interacting with them, pulling their tongues aside to clear their airways, and even dislodging items inserted into their mouths by researchers.
Not only was this caregiving behavior “innate rather than learned” (all of the caregiving mice were under three months old and had never seen this behavior modeled), but their accompanying brain activity – which saw oxytocin play a central role – was completely consistent with “other caring behaviours across a wide range of vertebrate species”. Including, of course, humans.
This is dangerous territory for the animal researcher industry, not least because it adds to the mountain of evidence undercutting their characterization of mice as unfeeling “tools” for human professional advancement.
So, predictably, animal researchers are scrambling to downplay the findings – i.e., doing what they do best: twisting reality to protect their careers and funding streams.
Two career animal researchers – both of whom profit from harming rodents to study empathy – were quick to try their hands at undermining the research conclusions.
James Burkett of the University of Toledo admitted that the mice’s behavior appears driven by an “‘altruistic impulse’”, but then made the absurd claim that we cannot assume the mice intended to help . . . even though they voluntarily and intentionally did just that.
Then, there’s Peggy Mason of the University of Chicago, who took denialism to an even more ridiculous level. She compared a mouse actively clearing another’s airway to a random pedestrian picking up a lost $20 bill: “‘If I drop twenty dollars, by mistake, on the street and someone else picks it up, that person has been helped, but I have not helped them,’….”
That’s right: according to a “researcher” currently claiming to study “the biological basis of empathy and helping”, a mouse choosing to resuscitate an unconscious cagemate is no different from a random human pocketing cash off the street.
Though not wanting to dignify this self-serving nonsense with a response, it should be known that the research itself destroys Mason’s attempted analogy: the caregiving mice directly benefited the unconscious mice by significantly accelerating their recoveries.
Researchers even ruled our curiosity as motivation for the caregiving behavior: when placed in cages with unresponsive mice over consecutive days, the caregiving mice increased their efforts instead of losing interest. The mice weren’t just responding to novelty; they were responding to the needs of others.
Animal researchers always seek to twist facts to suit their agenda, and this latest example fits their pattern perfectly:
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- They cherry-pick science to maintain their power. Burkett and Mason make a living studying empathy in rodents, but, when rodents demonstrate empathy, they scramble to deny it to justify even more research.
- They contradict themselves constantly. Animal researchers claim to study nonhuman animals because of their similarity to humans but, then, “simultaneously . . . depersonalize them” whenever it suits them.
- They dismiss the intelligence and emotional complexity of nonhuman animals whenever it threatens their industry. “[W]e should be really careful about anthropomorphizing,” they say, as if applying common sense is some radical act of misplaced sentimentality.
Perhaps most ironically of all: inside animal research labs, the only creatures not displaying empathy are the humans.
So, really, these perverse experiments don’t just expose mice’s empathy; they expose the callousness of the industry that exploits them:
Only humans do experiments on others. You will never find a mouse doing vivisection on a human. Causing suffering to innocent creatures in the name of self-preservation [or understanding] is a purely human trait.
To summarize the absurdity of it all: Self-proclaimed “[s]cientists with no empathy for mice studied mice to see if they have empathy for other mice. They confirmed that mice have empathy, which they studied by harming some mice and seeing if the unharmed mice cared. They did care.”
But the humans didn’t.
The humans cared only about protecting their narrative, their careers, and their funding streams.
And, at the end of the day, that tells us everything we need to know.