“It’s our biological mammalian inheritance to help. It’s not helping that’s the weird thing.”
As a child, Peggy Mason was a biology prodigy. By the age of nine she was assisting the zoologist Dr. Charles Handley in teaching taxidermy at the Smithsonian. Today, as a neurobiologist, Peggy is still working with mammals but now she’s studying whether they experience empathy and act to help one another.
Peggy was studying the subject of pain modulation until a post-doctoral student at the University of Chicago, Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal, asked if she’d be interested in expanding her work to collaborate on a project about empathy. “I went over to see her that same day,” says Peggy, and the upshot was the discovery that like humans, rats have an aversion to witnessing the distress of others and a strong motivation to help someone else who’s suffering.
Want to Learn More, See More, Know More?
You’ll love this video from Nova that shows one rat deliberately setting free another rat that’s trapped. Later, the rat is confronted with the question of which to do first: save some rat it had never even met before, or wolf down the chocolate Peggy offered? Also, here’s the article in Science magazine.
How can I take a class with Peggy?
On Coursera, take “Understanding the Brain: The Neurobiology of Every Day Life,” a free course taught by Peggy. Also you can gain more insights from Peggy by subscribing to her blog, which is fascinating and far-reaching in its subject matter.
