• Question: would you harm eny animals in your work?

    Asked by gedy123 to Kapila, Suzanne, Claire, Joanna, Renata on 17 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by arnog002, keeranmanoharan, snool002, brada181, ainebailey.
    • Photo: Claire El Mouden

      Claire El Mouden answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      No, but that is because I my work does not involve animal experiments.

      I don’t think animal’s should be used for testing things like make-up, but I do accept, that there is some essential science, that leads to life-saving discoveries that cannot be done without some experiments with animals. I think it’s very important though that it is kept to an absolute minimum. In this country, there are very very strict rules which means that the animals’ welfare is really carefully looked after and they are not allowed to suffer and they are only used for studies that are really important.

    • Photo: Suzanne Harvey

      Suzanne Harvey answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      I agree with Claire on this one! Some animal experiments can be justified if they lead to really major findings that save lives, but I wouldn’t ever harm the animals I work with. In fact, for behaviour studies where you want to know how animals behave in their natural environment, it’s really important not to disturb them at all. They are so used to us following them around that they just ignore us, which is perfect for seeing their natural behaviour.

      I’ve always been interested in what makes humans behave the way we do, and the choice of research came for me at the end of my undergraduate degree – I had the option to experiment on mice to understand how chemicals in the brain work, or study monkeys to work out how we evolved. I chose monkey watching and haven’t looked back since!

    • Photo: Renata Medeiros

      Renata Medeiros answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      I also agree completely with Claire and Suzanne. I would never deliberately harm animals during my research and, as Claire pointed, I wouldn’t be allowed to do it, even if I wanted to, which is a very good thing. In my field of research, we need to train for many years before applying for a licence to catch and handle birds and if we want to even pluck a single feather from them, we need another special licence just for that. This is not to say that, at least in my field of research, we do not disturb or cause an impact on the animals we study, because we always do. So the things to keep in mind are: always try to minimise such impacts (as Suzanne pointed); and ask yourself if the research you are doing will benefit the animals or the environment enough to justify that impact.

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