Can Animals be Moral Agents?

This experiment confi rms and extends an earlier finding that a hungry rhesus monkey (0) will avoid securing food if this subjects another mon key (SA) to electric shock. In the present series this "sacrificial" behavior was manifested in 6 of 10 animals independently of the relative position of the two animals in a dominance hierarchy. It was also found that while prior shock of the 0 resulted in inhibition of responding following the introduction of shock to the SA, this variable was not correlated with the final manifestation of a sacrificial pattern. Relative . position in the dominance hierarchy, sexual differences, noise from the SA monkey, and acquired aversion to the experimental apparatus itself were all experimentally ruled out as influencing factors. The familiarity of the mon keys was a significant factor, 0 monkeys being less apt to shock a former cage mate. The stronger than normal unwillingness to cause shock found among previously shocked 0 mon keys did tend over a period of time to erode towards more normal levels of unwillingness to