If you meet an unconscious and unpopular person, your instinct is likely to push you to try to revive it, but it turns out that this type of social behavior may not be limited to humans.
In a new study published in the magazineScience“Experimental mice showed a set of stereotypes and emergency responses during the confrontation, a lack of consciousness in the cage, indicating that our natural tendency to help and provide care is rooted in other mammals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pok2izaw2lc
A refreshment between the mice
During his scientific career, Professor Lee Zhang, professor of physiology at the Zelka Institute of Genetic Neuroscience and the Cake School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, has anesthetized many mice for his research, but he says in his speech with the efforts of Al Jazeera, “this is the first time that we are doing this type of action similar to the fundamental aspects respond to human emergencies. “
A few years ago, Zhang began to notice that sometimes when the narcotic mice returns in their cages, the surrounding mice begin to act strangely and show a very strong social interaction towards their attachment of consciousness.
Initially, the mouse only felt his companion in the cage, but with his inability to respond, the behavior intensified, and it seemed that he was trying to rekindle his unconscious partner in a way that resembles the first care that humans have made.
The experiences of these behaviors seem to have a rare opportunity to study this very important thing in more detail.
First, Zhang and his colleagues photographed what happened when they were shown in the mice held in the cage of the dead, unconscious or unable to move, some of them were familiar to the mouse which is probably a career, and some are completely foreign.
During a series of tests, the researchers found that the mice the subject of the study spent much longer in the interaction with the unconscious mouse, on average of around 47% of the 13 -minute surveillance period were allocated to interact specifically with this mouse.
“The sponsorship mice showed a coherent group of behavior that degenerated over time, and it seemed that they were able to deliberately execute it,” said Zhang, who led the study. He added: “It is similar to human aid practices which aim to rekindle unconscious individuals by physical stimulation and preserve the airways,” he added.
First, the mouse felt and cleaned his distressed companion, through a very extensive physical interaction, up to more powerful actions such as scrapes, bitch, language, even by pulling the tongue, and these actions cause pain, which helps to awaken unconscious individuals.
These physical reactions also included licking the eyes and mortie of the mouth, because the mouse has concentrated their intensive efforts on the head of their unconscious peer, while the stressful mice received a more targeted cleaning on the body.
“It turns out that these behaviors have accelerated the recovery of the mouse to which the sponsorship was carried out, because the cleaning of the mouse of consciousness has directly led to the increase in their motor responses, including the tail tremor,” said Zhang.
After focusing on the mouth and the mice remain unnecessary, the mice provided care with the language of their non-respiants in more than 50% of cases.
This behavior continued even in total darkness, indicating that mice depend on several sensory signals which go beyond the vision of the discovery of an unconscious and response companion.
Primary behaviors
In a separate test, the researchers gently put a non -toxic plastic ball in a mouse mouth. In 80% of cases, mice provided to help eliminate this body, but objects placed in the right mouse or its genitals have been ignored.
“In first aid, the guarantee of opening the respiratory tract is very important, because muscle relaxation – including language muscles – can lead to blockage,” explains Zhang.
In mice – as he says – another mouse shot widens the opening of the airways. Meanwhile, the exotic bodies which were artificially placed in the mouth of the individual are removed (which can cause possible blocking in the airways) through the Savior procedures.
The most surprising thing is that emergency intervention efforts led to the unconscious mouse, because these mice were able to recover and start walking before those that were left for a long time, and as soon as the auxiliary mice responded, then stopped their behavior by providing care.
The results of the study indicate that the mice interact not only at random with their awareness of comrades, but their attention intentionally focuses on the fields of the face and mouth, similar to the way in which human paramedical paramedics can examine the respiratory tract of a conscious person.
According to Pashang, “the recovery behavior is not similar to cardiovascular recovery which requires specialized training, but rather the use of fragrant salts or slap to wake up a person or make basic first aid to ensure the ability of the unconscious person to breathe”.
Idea or curiosity?
In addition, researchers have noted that these behaviors are strongly affected by familiarity, because male and female mice have shown a much higher level of recovery behavior when they are confronted with a familiar and not answered companion compared to a strange and not responded companion, which corresponds to other types of positive social behavior which also involves familiarity.
These results led Zhang and his team to an alternative interpretation of the belief that the mice offered to care can already try to help their friends consciously, but it is perhaps his curiosity towards an unclear mouse placed in his cage.
To test this possibility, the researchers repeated their experience (on several occasions an exhibition of mice to the same conscious companion) over a period of 5 days. It turns out that mice are already more interested in saving their unconscious comrades during this period, which indicates that recovery operations are not only a side effect of curiosity.
“If curiosity was motivation, we would touch that the level of curiosity gradually decreases, because the state of the unconscious comrade is no longer new for the mouse after the first exhibition. However, we noticed the opposite,” said Zhang.
He adds: “Based on the results of the experience of the repeated exhibition, the mouse spent more time interacting with the unconscious partner on the fifth day. This guide refutes the possibility that mouse actions are not the subject of a motivated study in search of the new.”
Zhang believes that these behaviors are innate and not acquired, which is due to the fact that experimental mice were young people who were raised in laboratories without any training or previous experience, that is to say without any previous contact with a conscious companion.
He explains that “the demonstration of male and feminine mice is behaviors towards a familiar and aware of the same type indicates that these behaviors are instinctive and not acquired after birth”.
The rehearsal of such actions which parallel the fundamental aspects of efforts to respond to human emergency indicate that they are deeply rooted in the DNA of mammals.
Previous studies have documented such behaviors in mammals with a more important brain that try to take care of their afflicted peers and help helpless individuals of their species, as Chimpanzee Which touches and licks his wounded peers, andDolphin It tries to push his companion struck towards the roof to be able to breathe, andElephant This provides help with his sick companions.
We know that mice Help Other peers when they fall into the trap, but the behavior of “first aid” in the smallest mammals has never been taught before.
Consequently, the results of this study indicate that “animal sponsorship behavior play a role in improving the cohesion of the group, and it can be more common in social animals than we think because of their potential advantages”.
Aid and care hormone
Finally, the researchers used the use of the advanced brain of the mice, and they found that the neurons that secrete oxytocin are active in the adjacent nucleus to the Ptabin under the hypothalamus, an area that helps direct social behavior in auxiliary mice while interacting with their unconscious comrades in the cage.
Hormonal oxytocin is the basis of assistance, interconnection and other social protection behaviors of a group of species, and because of its spread and its role in the production of this innate first aid behavior, it seems to play a role in the stimulation of the behavior of luxury in mice while interacting with its unconscious comrades in the cage.
Other researchers have noticed similar behavior with experimental mice study Supporting another team of researchers from the University of CaliforniaDescribe Also a third research team last January.
Researchers discovered that when mice are displayed on non-responses, they are active Almond The middle was different from the brain region that Zhang and his colleagues have noticed, are active when the mouse interacted with a tense companion, indicating the difference in behavior of “first aid”.