While empathy is a century-old psychological concept, its study in non-human animals has become the focus of much recent scientific interest, as it promises to provide the clues to understand the evolutionary origins of our social and moral nature. A review of the comparative study of empathy is thus timely to complement and constrain anthropocentric views, and to integrate current findings. However, this is not an easy task. The study of animal empathy has developed using different paradigms, different concepts of the phenomena involved, and the absence of a systematic program. Herein, we carry out a comprehensive review of the literature on complex forms of empathy in non-human animals: sympathetic concern and empathic perspective-taking. In particular, we focus on consolation and targeted helping, as the best examples of each category. In so doing, we try to shed light on the current debate concerning whether these phenomena are exclusively human traits. First, we try to clarify the terminology and taxonomy of forms of empathy, providing operative criteria for these phenomena that are applicable to both human and non-human animals. Second, we discuss whether the available evidence qualifies such behaviour as empathic. Third, we aim to provide an integrative view of the field, clarifying the challenges and conditions to satisfy. We also hope to highlight the importance of the study of these processes for elucidating the evolutionary history of this capacity across the animal kingdom.

Emotional contagion, the emotional state‐matching of an individual with another, seems to be crucial for many social species. In recent years evidence on emotional contagion in different animal species has accumulated. However, despite its adaptative advantages and its presumed simplicity, the study and direct demonstration of this phenomenon present more complexities than previously thought. For these reasons, a review of the literature on emotional contagion in nonhuman species is timely to integrate current findings. In this paper thus, we carry out a comprehensive review of the most relevant studies on emotional contagion in animals and discuss the main problems and challenges of the field. We conclude that more research is needed to broaden our understanding of the mechanisms and functions of emotional contagion and the extent to which this process is present in a wide variety of species. Furthermore, the comparative study of emotional contagion would benefit from the use of systematized paradigms including both behavioral and physiological measures and the simultaneous recording of the responses of the interacting individuals to reliably assess an emotional state‐matching between them and reliable controls. This article is categorized under: Cognitive Biology > Evolutionary Roots of Cognition Psychology > Comparative Psychology Psychology > Emotion and Motivation

No abstract

Networks in biology have provided a powerful tool to describe and study very complex biological processes and systems such as animal societies. Social network analysis allows us to assess different processes occurring in animal groups. In the current study, we use this approach to investigate how conflict dynamics and post-conflict interactions shape the social networks of groups of captive bottlenose dolphins. We first examined temporal changes and aggression-affiliation motifs in the observed dolphins’ network structure. Using the results of the previous analysis, we built two models that simulate the dynamics of aggression and affiliation in a small dolphin group. The first model is based only on the observed statistics of interactions, whereas the second includes post conflict memory effects as well. We found that the resulting social networks and their most common motifs matched the association patterns observed in wild and captive dolphins. Furthermore, the model with memory was able to capture the observed dynamics of this group of dolphins. Thus, our models suggest the presence and influence of post-conflict behaviors on the structure of captive dolphins’ social networks. Therefore, the network approach reveals as an effective method to define animal social networks and study animal sociality. Finally, this approach can have important applications in the management of animal populations in captive settings.

La permanencia de los objetos, la capacidad de representar objetos ocultos, no se ha evaluado ampliamente en los cetáceos y la evidencia disponible es contradictoria. Aunque se cree que los delfines nariz de botella (Tursiops truncatus) están dotados de las capacidades cognitivas necesarias para aprobar pruebas complejas de permanencia de objetos, han fallado en una serie de tareas que involucran desplazamientos invisibles, lo que plantea la cuestión de si logran la permanencia de los objetos maestros. La falta de comprensión de la contención o la falta de experiencia en el seguimiento de objetos ocultos tanto de la vista como de la ecolocación pueden explicar estos resultados inesperados. El objetivo del presente estudio fue probar estas dos hipótesis en una serie de tareas de desplazamiento visibles e invisibles con delfines nariz de botella. Nuestros resultados sugieren que los delfines pueden tener éxito en tareas complejas de permanencia de objetos, pero solo si tienen experiencia visual previa con los movimientos de objetos dentro de otros objetos. Por lo tanto, estos resultados apuntan a un papel importante de la experiencia visual en el desarrollo de habilidades de permanencia de objetos.