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From dinosaurs to dolphins, what gaze following reveals about the evolution of empathy
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Salon
Posted: October 25th, 2024
https://www.salon.com/2024/09/13/from-dinosaurs-to-dolphins-...
Following someone’s gaze may seem like a simple act, but it has profound implications for the evolution of intelligence. And humans are far from the only animals that do it. A recent study of bottlenose dolphins in the journal Heliyon adds to previous research identifying the ability to follow the gazes of members of other species — a visual and cognitive trick that may relate to the development of empathy — across a wide range of mammals, not just humans and our fellow primates. What’s even more interesting is to trace this ability through not just the mammal family but beyond, to reptiles and birds — and perhaps back as far as the Jurassic period. In general, by identifying important objects in their environment, an animal’s ability to follow the gaze of another, including another species, may form a basis for advanced social cognition, paving the way for cooperation and empathy. One such high level type, “geometrical gaze following,” occurs if you block the thing that the other is looking at so the subject can’t see it, so that they will physically reposition themself to see what others are seeing. Geometrical gaze following isn’t even seen in human children before eighteen months of age – and yet wolves, apes and monkeys, and birds of the crow (corvid) and starling genuses have all been found to engage in it. Looking at which living species show evidence of advanced gaze following and which don’t suggests that even the more advanced type ... evolved back in the time of dinosaurs.
Note: Read about the world's biggest eye contact experiment and explore a powerful social experiment in Australia where people rekindle human connection through a minute of silent eye contact. For more inspiring news related to this article, check out our news archive on animal wonders.
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