These animals can share the emotional state of others, which in psychology is called emotional contagion. Research has shown that when a rat sees another rat in distress, the neural structures activated in that rat’s brain closely resembles those activated in humans brains when feeling empathy for pain of others.

One experiment showed that rats will release a fellow rat from an unpleasant cage even if they are not rewarded for it. And if given chocolate treats afterwards, the free rat would usually save at least one treat for the former captive.

This selfless behaviour comes from rats’ socially complex lives in family groups of multiple generations. They form lifelong bonds with other rats and share socially learned skills, such as foraging techniques, across generations. This means rats have a form of culture.

A study from 2023 even showed that rats can imagine places and things that aren’t in front of them at the time. In experiments rats were shown to navigate a space in their thoughts, that they have previously explored. As in the studies of empathy, researchers demonstrated this by comparing the regions in the rat’s brains that were activated to those that are activated when humans think about navigating their way through places they have visited.