This page posts news on animal care and animal welfare issues worldwide. It serves as an educational medium for both laboratory animal users and animal care takers to enhance understanding on animal welfare.
Depression researchers rethink popular mouse swim tests
Nearly every scientist who has used mice or rats to study depression is familiar with the forced-swim test. The animal is dropped into a tank of water while researchers watch to see how long it tries to stay afloat. In theory, a depressed rodent will give up more quickly than a happy one — an assumption that has guided decades of research on antidepressants and genetic modifications intended to induce depression in lab mice.
But mental-health researchers have become increasingly sceptical in recent years about whether the forced-swim test is a good model for depression in people. It is not clear whether mice stop swimming because they are despondent or because they have learnt that a lab technician will scoop them out of the tank when they stop moving. Factors such as water temperature also seem to affect the results.
…Due in part to concerns about the forced-swim test’s accuracy, major drug companies such as Roche, Janssen and AbbVie have abandoned the procedure in recent years….
…one approach could include developing animal tests that accurately measure specific symptoms of depression, such as lack of interest in a favourite food….Read more…(By Sara Reardon , in Nature, Jul 18, 2019)
Neveda, USA (the second state after California) Bans Animal Testing for Cosmetics
Governor Steve Sisolak signed SB 197, The Nevada Cruelty Free Cosmetics Act, into law today. The bill prohibits cosmetics manufacturers from selling any products tested on animals after January 1, 2020, when the law goes into effect. It’s the second state to ban the sale of animal-tested cosmetics after California. Read more…(By Kat Smith , in LIVEKINDLY , New York City, Jun 3, 2019)
(Source: New York Times)
The question, “What is it to be human?” is not just narcissistic, it involves a culpable obtuseness. It is rather like asking, “What is it to be white?” It connotes unearned privileges that have been used to dominate and exploit. But we usually don’t recognize this because our narcissism is so complete…
Domesticated animals occupy a privileged sphere, but even they are often treated cruelly (think of puppy mills, or abandoned feral cats). The factory farming of pigs, chickens and other animals is a relatively new form of hideous brutality. As for the creatures in the “wild,” we can see that our human crimes are having a devastating effect on them: the damages that come from lab research using animals; the manifold harms endemic to the confinement of apes and elephants in zoos; the depletion of whale stocks by harpooning; the confinement of orcas and dolphins in marine theme parks; the poaching of elephants and rhinoceroses to benefit the international black market; the illicit trafficking of African elephants to American zoos; the devastation of habitat for many large mammals that is resulting from climate change. It is now estimated that human activity has contributed to the extinction of more than 80 mammalian species. Read more… (By Martha C. Nussbaum, in The New York Time, 20AUg2018)
Baboon Worked Together to Escape from Southwest National Primate Research Center in San Antonio, USA
Four baboons overcame the wall of the outdoor enclosure with a 55-gallon barrel on 14Aril. One of them ran down the road. A footage in YouTube shows facility staff chasing him on a road. All of them were caught eventually. The barrels serve as enrichment items for foraging behavior expression. See more about the center, the enclosure and the barrel here. Read more about the news here.
This short adventure of the laboratory animals highlights their desire for freedom, their intelligence and the potential hazards for animal carer. (By Siva Tsang, 19Apr2018)