Abstract
Prosocial behaviour, including helping behaviour, benefits others. Recently, helping-like behaviour has been observed in rats, but whether it is oriented towards rescue, social contact with others, or other goals remains unclear. Therefore, we investigated whether helping-like behaviour could be observed in mice similar to that in rats. Because mice are social animals widely used in neuroscience, the discovery of helping-like behaviour in mice would be valuable in clarifying the psychological and biological mechanisms underlying pro-sociability. We constrained mice inside tubes. Subject mice were allowed to move freely in cages with tubes containing constrained conspecifics. The subject mice released both cagemates and stranger mice but did not engage in opening empty tubes. Furthermore, the same behaviour was observed under aversive conditions and with anesthetised conspecifics. Interestingly, hungry mice opened the tubes containing food before engaging in tube-opening behaviour to free constrained conspecifics. Mice showed equal preferences for constrained and freely moving conspecifics. We demonstrated for the first time that mice show tube-opening behaviour. Furthermore, we partly clarified the purpose and motivation of this behaviour. An effective mouse model for helping-like behaviour would facilitate research on the mechanisms underlying prosocial behaviour.
Highlights
Helping behaviour, a form of prosocial behaviour, involves acting for the benefit of others in the absence of reward[14]
Mouse empathy-like behaviour is considered to occur only for cagemate mice[9,20,21,22]. If this tube-opening behaviour is based on empathy, it was expected that the behaviour would differ depending on whether the restrained conspecific was a cagemate or a stranger; (3) Testing tube-opening behaviour to free anesthetised cagemate mice
Subject mice that were not in a hungry state did not actively engage in opening the lid of the tube containing the food (Fig. 3F, U = 4, n1 = n2 = 11, p = 0.001). These results indicate that hungry subject mice prioritise food acquisition over helping constrained conspecifics
Summary
A form of prosocial behaviour, involves acting for the benefit of others (e.g. rescuing others from difficult situations) in the absence of reward[14]. Changes in tube-opening behaviour of subject mice with respect to a cagemate or stranger restrained mouse were compared. Mouse empathy-like behaviour is considered to occur only for cagemate mice[9,20,21,22] If this tube-opening behaviour is based on empathy, it was expected that the behaviour would differ depending on whether the restrained conspecific was a cagemate or a stranger; (3) Testing tube-opening behaviour to free anesthetised cagemate mice. We investigated whether tube-opening behaviour changes due to internal factors such as mood and the physical condition of the subject mouse. In this experiment, we clarified whether the mouse could identify the contents of the tube. We expected that tube-opening behaviour would not be performed under this condition if the motivation was not strong
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