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Science

Mice Give First Aid (thetimes.com) 18

Slashdot reader databasecowgirl writes: The Times is reporting an interesting study published in Science in which mice demonstrated doing first aid. In the replicated study, an anaesthetised mouse is exposed to another mouse who recognises the distress and clears airway to revive the unconscious mouse.

The mice had never seen an unconscious animal before, so the behaviour is thought to be instinctive.

From the Times: Large social mammals have previously been documented lending assistance to each other. Chimpanzees have been seen tending to wounded companions, dolphins are known to push distressed pod members to the surface to help them breathe, and elephants have been observed assisting their ailing relatives. Never before, however, has such a meticulous, paws-on approach to first aid been recorded in a creature as small as a mouse.

Mice Give First Aid

Comments Filter:
  • Quick (Score:1, Troll)

    by dcollins ( 135727 )

    Get DOGE in to stop it, too much empathy

  • by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Sunday March 09, 2025 @01:21PM (#65221487) Journal
    This is the sort of primitive, instinctual, behavior you see in organisms not cognitively advanced enough to require prior authorization. Pitiful really. As we all know, it's the sophisticated demands of billing and coding communication that encouraged the evolution of behaviorally modern humanity; absent that theirs is clearly a dead end path.
    • Maybe the idea is inherited?

      Mice whose father or grandfather learned to associate the smell of cherry blossom with an electric shock became more jumpy in the presence of the same odour, and responded to lower concentrations of it than normal mice. The offspring also had more M71 receptors in their brains than did mice born from parents who had not had the smell conditioning and were more sensitive to it. “There was more real estate devoted to this particular odorant receptor, suggesting that there’s something in the sperm that is informing or allowing that information to be inherited,” Dias says.

      DNA sequencing of sperm from the grandfather mice and their sons also revealed epigenetic marks on the gene encoding M71 that weren’t seen in control mice. Female mice conditioned to fear acetophenone also appeared to transmit this “memory” to the next generation, although epigenetic marks on their eggs have not yet been analysed.

      https://www.newscientist.com/a... [newscientist.com]

  • by Krishnoid ( 984597 ) on Sunday March 09, 2025 @01:44PM (#65221515) Journal
    I could have sworn this is an April Fool's joke. Seriously -- mouse-to-mouse resuscitation?
  • I will now include a mouse in my first aid kit.

    • by Coius ( 743781 )
      Their tiny hands can get into things larger hands can't get into. They can GET...UP...IN....THERE!
  • to have a contingent of malcontent freeloader mice agitating for free first aid and government cheese [wikipedia.org] paid for by taxes levied on evil top-hat wearing capitalist mice?

    • Evil mice have convinced everyone that free first-aid is bad and government cheese stops malcontents from being top-hat wearing capitalists. Daily 'news' promotes a "greed is good" lifestyle where climate change, environmental pollution, drug-addiction, gang violence, unemployment, illiteracy, PTSD, physical disability, teen pregnancy and mental health are problems to be ignored.
  • by databasecowgirl ( 5241735 ) on Sunday March 09, 2025 @03:08PM (#65221641)
    These creatures you call mice you see are not quite as they appear, they are merely the protrusions into our dimension of vast, hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings.

    -- H2G2
  • sorry my bad english: i see this happen with bugs in forest when i stay in a tent (For unlucky life reasons),a bug was hit by a spider the bug can't move (i don't know if it die or what) then another bug (that still transport a microscopic piece of wood) leave the wood away and go take the bug for move it away (i don't know where it want to send it,but i feel it want send it to the bug house hole)
    • and that time also i sad,because if feel,if only humans can have something for understand\talk with animals,then would be very easy for us to help them...but we don't have it so i was feel i was "not useful" , and was really bad feeling for me. i know that was "just a bug",but is sad to see cant help.
  • It feels like yet another "AI" hallucination.

The more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the drain.

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