Recently, a case of lifeboat ethics occurred. On Aug. 4, Graham and Sheryl Anley, while boating off the coast of South Africa, hit a rock. As the boat threatened to sink, the husband got off, but his wife was trapped in the boat. Instead of freeing his wife and getting her to shore, Graham grabbed Rosie, their pet dog. With Rosie safe and sound, Graham returned for Sheryl. All are doing fine.

It’s great story, but it doesn’t strike me as especially newsworthy. News is supposed to be about something fairly unique, and recent research suggests that, in the right circumstances, lots of people also would have grabbed their Rosie first.

We have strange relationships with our pets. We look after our pets with great love and better health care than billions of people receive. We speak to pets with the same high-pitched voices that we use for babies.As an extreme example of our feelings about pets, the Nazis had strict laws that guaranteed the kind treatment of the pets of Jews being shipped to death camps.

A recent paper by George Regents University demonstrates this human involvement with pets to an astonishing extent. Participants in the study were told a situation in which a bus is out o control, bearing down on a dog and a human. Which do you save? With responses from more than 500 people, the answer was that it depended: What kind of human and what kind of dog?

Everyone would save a brother, grandparent or close friend rather than a strange dog. But when people considered their own dog VS people less connected with them -- a distant cousin or a hometown stranger -- votes a favor of saving the dog came rolling in. And an astonishing 40% of respondents, including 46% of women, voted to save their dog over a foreign tourist.

What does a finding like this mean? First, it is that your odds aren’t so good if you find yourself in another country with a bus bearing down on you and a cute dog. But it also points to something deeper: our unprecedented attitude toward animals, which got its start with the birth of kind - hearted societies in the 19th century.

We prison people who abuse animals, put ourselves in harm’s way in boats between whales an whalers and show sympathy to Bambi and his mother. We can extend sympathy to an animal and feel its pain like no other species. But let’s not be too proud of ourselves. As this study and too much of our history show, we’re pretty selective about how we extend our kindness to other human beings.

Do you enjoy playing computer games? They can be thrilling, especially when you’re competing against others. They involve lots of skill, and offer a chance to switch off from the pressures of real life. But imagine if your gaming talents could actually be put to use in the real world? Well, now businesses are waking up to the skills gamers can bring to the workplace.

As an example, the BBC spoke to trainee surgeon Saied Froghi. He played video games like Age of Empires and Halo in his spare time when he was at medical school. But this relaxing pastime wasn’t distracting him from his studies—he thinks his time in front of a screen actually helped his surgery skills. He claims it helped him with his concentration, and he compares some of the skills used in keyhole surgery with using a game console (控制台). He says, “Your hands know where the buttons are and how to exactly control the instrument.”

Certainly, operating gaming controls help to develop good hand-eye coordination, but there are other abilities you can learn which can be applied to real-life work situations. Start-up company Game Academy told the BBC’s David Molloy that some games involve strategy and resource management, which are good skills for management. It analyses gamers’ habits from their online gaming profile and offers courses in valuable skills that reflect their aptitude. These are skills that can be developed, and if carefully reworded, can be added to resumes.

Employers might still need convincing that gamers are not just teenagers wasting their time in their bedrooms without thinking about their career prospects. But business consultant Mia Bennett told the BBC that gaming can help skills like “decision-making, the ability to anticipate and planning…It also helps with meta-skills—learning how to learn, experimentation, and creative thinking.”

You might think that the idea of gaming developing transferable skills is like the games themselves—pure fantasy—and a gamer doesn’t want to associate the fun and escapism it provides with work. It certainly doesn’t guarantee you a good job, and you need to be an experienced gamer for your skills to shine. But if so much time is being spent attracted by the challenge of Portal or the strategy of Civilization, why not put those talents to good use?

Rising numbers of older adults are unable to care for themselves, often leading to serious health problems and even death, according to state and local government agencies. So-called self-neglect cases generally involve the inability to perform basic self-care, such as providing oneself with food, personal health, medication and safety.

Seniors who no longer drive, for instance, are often unable to get to medical appointments, worsening health problems that can make them unable to care for themselves. A fall can result in body injuries leaving one bedridden and unable to care for oneself. Failure to pay bills for public services could lead to service cutoffs. Forgetting to pay rent could lead to the loss of a home.

Mr. Mc-Cormack, 75 years old, and his wife, 71, both had mental illness and stayed in hospitals from time to time, unable to care for their possessions. Despite repeated visits to their home by local officials, the Mc-Cormacks refused assistance. But after they were found living in their car parked outside their house in December 2017, officials removed them from their home and helped them settle in a nursing home.

Self-neglect cases, like above, involved 144, 296 people across the country in 2018, according to a report. The federal government doesn't have comparable data for previous years, but several state and local service providers say they are seeing the self-neglect problem rise.

The reasons seniors stop caring for themselves vary, including illness, depression and poverty. The loss of the spouse or a neighbor who previously kept an eye on an individual often starts a decline into self-neglect, experts say. And the key to reducing self-neglect cases is providing services to enable seniors to remain in their homes safely, such as reliable transportation for medical appointments and shopping, as well as affordable home help.