The human ability to care for others may be deeply rooted in the past and may have originated in prehistoric animals that lived millions of years ago, according to a new study.

“Some of the mechanisms underlying our ability to experience fear or fall in love are clearly rooted in the past,” explains Hans Hoffmann, an evolutionary neuroscientist at the University of Texas.

Scientists are usually wary of attributing human emotions to animals. However, it is generally accepted that many animals have moods, including fish.

IN new study published in Scienceit has been established that fish can detect fear in other fish, causing fear in them, a property regulated by oxytocinthe same hormone responsible, among other things, for empathy, affection, care in people.

To come to this conclusion, the researchers they deleted the genes associated with the production and absorption of oxytocin by zebrafish—small tropical fish often used in scientific research—which at that time antisocialinability to detect fear or change one’s behavior in stressful situations.

When these modified fish were injected with oxytocin, their ability to sense and reflect the feelings of other fish was restored.

“They react to fear of other fish. In that sense, they behave exactly like we do,” says Ibukun Akinrinade, a neuroscientist at the University of Calgary and co-author of the study.

The study also found that zebrafish pay more attention to fish that were previously stressed, a behavior the researchers likened to “comfort.”

The new study demonstrates the “ancestral role” of oxytocin in the transmission of emotions, notes Rui Oliveira, a behavioral biologist and one of the study’s leaders.

“This brain process probably worked for about 450 million years, when you and I shared a common ancestor with these little fish,” explains Hoffman.

Oxytocin is often referred to as the “love hormone” in humans, but according to Hoffman, it’s actually “more like a thermostat it determines what is socially most important in a given situation, activating neural circuits that can save you from danger.”

“The most basic form of empathy is contagious fear — something that is invaluable to survival when a member of your group discovers a predator or other danger,” says environmentalist Carl Safida of Stony Brook University in New York.

Source: Associated Press.