Study finds 'rudimentary' empathy in macaques
Tuesday, December 1, 2015 - 10:40
in Psychology & Sociology
(Phys.org)—A pair of researchers with Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Université Lyon, in France has conducted a study that has shown that macaques have at least some degree of empathy towards their fellow cage mates. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Sebastien Ballesta and Jean-René Duhamela describe the experiments they carried out and why they believe the results suggest that macaques are aware of the emotional state of other macaques and express empathy towards them under certain circumstances.