12 October 2019 | New Scientist | 19Experiments on animals that
tell us about their minds and
how they experience the world
can also tell us how best to keep
those animals content. It is a
positive feedback loop.
This has led to real
improvements in rodent research.
Rats and mice used to be housed
in stark cages on their own.
“That’s illegal now,” says Smulders.
“It’s required and routine to give
them bedding materials, places to
hide, chewing tubes. These things
have changed precisely because
there’s more of an understanding
now that these animals do have
feelings of their own.”
But shouldn’t it be possible to
treat animals well without having
to experiment on them to find out
what they need? It isn’t necessarily
that simple. You might assume,
for instance, that it would be
a good thing to give rats larger
cages, but that may not be true.
Studies have shown that rats’
stress levels are lowered by having
places to hide and being housed
with other rats. It isn’t more space
that’s important, but the right
kind of space.
Ultimately, finding out the
best way to improve the lives of
animals comes down to evidence.
Here’s the paradox: to treat
animals – whether on farms,
in labs or even in the wild –
with the respect many feel they
deserve, we must understand
the ways we affect their lived
experience, and to do that in
a detailed way we may need to
study them closely in the lab.
“We keep animals in zoos and
circuses, use them for our meat.
We do lots of harm to animals. Is
this justified?” says Smulders. The
only way to answer that question,
he says, is to do experiments. “It’s
not enough to sit in an armchair
and think about it. You have to
investigate it and prove it.” ❚Research Center poll found that
52 per cent of adults in the US
oppose the use of animals in
scientific research, generally.
We do have ways of trying
to ensure that animal research
leads to benefits. In the US,
the National Academies of
Sciences, Engineering, and
Medicine states that all such
research should show “relevance
to human or animal health,
advancement of knowledge,
or the good of society”. That may
sound generic, but there are also
specific rules that lay out the
physical environments required
for laboratory animals. These
include everything from heat and
humidity to how much vibration
an animal can experience.
In fact, those guidelines were
informed by the very research
they are designed to oversee.LOIC^ POIDEV
IN/
NATU
RE
,^ IREP
UBLIC/ALAMYassisting captive breeding
projects and subsequent releases.
Opinions as to whether these
are good enough justifications for
animal experiments are split. “It’s
a dilemma, and I struggle with it
a little bit myself,” says Smulders.
One thing is for sure: if the
overall goal is conservation, lab
experiments on animals can’t
tell us much in isolation.
Playing chess
Think, for example, of the 1950s
studies in which chimps played
chess, says Ludwig Huber at the
University of Veterinary Medicine
Vienna in Austria. They told us
that chimps had the curiosity to
try out the game. That knowledge
couldn’t be used for conservation,
though, because the setting was
so far removed from the animals’
natural environment.
Huber says we should instead
be doing lab experiments and
field observations in conjunction.
“We need to know what is the real
problem the animal is solving in
the wild,” he says.
To conserve birds, it may be
reasonable to do systematic lab
experiments to get rigorous
evidence on how they remember
where they have stored food,
for instance. But we would also
need to study them in the wild
to see how that translates into
real behaviour.
Deciding whether animal
experiments of any kind are
worthwhile also involves
balancing potential harm to the
animal with the wider benefits.
For example, testing drugs on
animals may hurt them, but the
medical benefits to people might
be seen to outweigh that harm.
Studies of animal cognition
are a far greyer area, however.
Public opinion is already divided
on the wider issue. A 2018 Pew
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newscientist.com/insight3.52 million
Number of scientific procedures
carried out on animals in
Great Britain in 201851%
of these were experiments –
the rest involved breeding93%
of all procedures involved
mice, rats or fish56%
of all procedures were for
the purposes of basic science,
including medical research1%
of experimental procedures
involved cats, dogs, horses
or primates
Source: UK Home Office