Mice seen giving ‘first aid’ to unconscious companions

Young mice seemingly attempt to revive an anaesthetised cage mate by grooming and biting it and will even pull aside the tongue to clear its airway

By Chris Simms

20 February 2025

A mouse tends to an unconscious peer by pulling its tongue

Wenjian Sun et al. 2025

When they find another mouse unconscious, some mice seemingly try to revive their companion by pawing at them, biting and even pulling their tongue aside to clear their airways. The finding hints that caregiving behaviour might be more common in the animal kingdom than we thought.

There are rare reports of large, social mammals trying to help incapacitated members of their species, such as wild chimpanzees touching and licking wounded peers, dolphins attempting to push a distressed pod mate to the surface so it can breathe and elephants rendering assistance to ailing relatives.

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Now, Li Zhang at the University of Southern California (USC) and his colleagues have filmed what happened when they presented laboratory mice with a familiar cage mate that was either active or anaesthetised and unresponsive.

Over a series of tests, on average the animals devoted about 47 per cent of a 13-minute observation window to interacting with the unconscious partner, showing three sorts of behaviour.