1. Animal behaviour: Mice show empathyScience 312, 1967–1970 (2006)A mouse watching a cage-mate writhe in pain will writhe more itself, an observation that Jeffrey Mogil and his team at McGill University in Montreal conclude is evidence of rodent empathy.The researchers tested mice in twos, giving one or both mildly painful shots of acetic acid. If the two were strangers, they behaved as if they were on their own. But if they had lived together for a few weeks, and both got a shot, they both showed more abdominal constrictions, termed writhing, than when given a shot alone. The effect vanished if the roomies could not see one another.Empathy has previously been considered an attribute of primates alone. Of course, the empathetic response does not indicate that the mice consciously felt sorry for one another — only that they respond to each other's pain.
2.
Physiology: Ants take it in their strideScience 312, 1965–1967 (2006)Ants, those notorious picnic-crashers, will march long distances in search of food. But how do they find their way home again?Matthias Wittlinger of the University of Ulm, Germany, and his colleagues show that Saharan desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis, use a pedometer to count their strides. The authors allowed a group of ants to march from their nest to an experimental food site. Then, the ants were captured and the researchers either shortened the ants' legs by amputation or elongated them by gluing on stilts made of pig bristles. Both types of altered ants misjudged the distance home — the ants on stumps undershot while the ants on stilts (pictured above) went too far. Further work on the accuracy of the ant pedometer is planned.
(copy/paste do último número da Nature)
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1. Animal behaviour: Mice show empathyScience 312, 1967–1970 (2006)A mouse watching a cage-mate writhe in pain will writhe more itself, an observation that Jeffrey Mogil and his team at McGill University in Montreal conclude is evidence of rodent empathy.The researchers tested mice in twos, giving one or both mildly painful shots of acetic acid. If the two were strangers, they behaved as if they were on their own. But if they had lived together for a few weeks, and both got a shot, they both showed more abdominal constrictions, termed writhing, than when given a shot alone. The effect vanished if the roomies could not see one another.Empathy has previously been considered an attribute of primates alone. Of course, the empathetic response does not indicate that the mice consciously felt sorry for one another — only that they respond to each other's pain.
2.
Physiology: Ants take it in their strideScience 312, 1965–1967 (2006)Ants, those notorious picnic-crashers, will march long distances in search of food. But how do they find their way home again?Matthias Wittlinger of the University of Ulm, Germany, and his colleagues show that Saharan desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis, use a pedometer to count their strides. The authors allowed a group of ants to march from their nest to an experimental food site. Then, the ants were captured and the researchers either shortened the ants' legs by amputation or elongated them by gluing on stilts made of pig bristles. Both types of altered ants misjudged the distance home — the ants on stumps undershot while the ants on stilts (pictured above) went too far. Further work on the accuracy of the ant pedometer is planned.
(copy/paste do último número da Nature)