Pet rats are still understudied in terms of animal welfare and human-animal interaction
research. An extensive online survey targeting German-speaking rat caretakers was …

Animal sociality, an individual's propensity to associate with others, has fitness
consequences through mate choice, for example, directly, by increasing the pool of …

In the human mind, what is a social relationship, and what are the developmental origins of
this representation? In this paper, I consider findings from infant psychology and propose …

Rattus norvegicus is a social animal and holds a significant economic value, considering its
use in scientific research. Here, we use the Social Network Analysis (SNA) approach to …

Exploring new and unfamiliar environments is critical for survival, providing information on
food, shelter, mates, and sources of danger. The open field paradigm is commonly used to …

There is growing evidence that social relationships influence individual fitness through
various effects. Clarifying individual differences in social interaction patterns and …

Behavioral copying is a key process in group actions, but it is challenging for individuals with
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). We investigated behavioral contagion, or instinctual …

Empathy is the capacity to be affected by and share the emotions of others, to discern the
circumstances prompting another's emotional state, and to identify with another by adopting …

Animal experimentation is a hidden practice preventing people from empathising with the
suffering of the test subjects. The artistic research The Scent of Flowers, The Touch of Soil is …