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Hodlisforthepoor0x OP t1_jdwapl9 wrote

TL;DR - A new study suggests that the ability to care about others may have originated millions of years ago in prehistoric animals before fish and mammals diverged on the tree of life. Researchers found that fish can detect fear in other fish and become afraid too, a behaviour regulated by oxytocin, the same brain chemical that underlies the capacity for empathy in humans. The study also showed that zebrafish pay more attention to fish that have previously been stressed out, a behaviour the researchers likened to consoling them. The research suggests that oxytocin's role in transmitting emotion is an "ancestral role" that may have been in place around 450 million years ago.

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utsgeek t1_jdxy9d4 wrote

Oh thank you. I thought it was something like fish have predatory instincts or something

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cedley1969 t1_jdwl2bl wrote

Rats do something similar, they leave a urine trail, the next rat that follows can smell what was occurring due to the pheromones in the earlier rats. If a rat gets scared it pisses fear when it runs away, every other rat that follows it knows something happened.

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StraightOven4697 t1_jdwl7a6 wrote

Glad scientific funding is going to such important endeavors.

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hikealot t1_jdwwzr0 wrote

Uggghhhhhh….

We always have one of these snarky comments about the value of a basic research paper like this.

When I was in grad school, in the 90’s, one of the seminal papers in my area was on cell differentiation in embryonic sea urchins. I’m sure that if reddit existed in the 70’s, we’d have seen posts mocking the use of research money on that paper. It turned out to be one of the early building blocks towards organ printing.

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MountainBrains t1_jdx1xj6 wrote

This is important work. It isn’t just that fish can communicate, it’s how they communicate. There is a whole system present to transmit an emotion from one fish to another fish who then processes that emotion, (presumably) experiences their own, then behaves according the experience the other fish is having. The whole process is underpinned by neurological and chemical interactions that are comparable to other animals including humans. Understanding how that process works helps us understand animal life as a whole, including ourselves.

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