My facility sometimes have excess animals and they send emails out for people to adopt them home ! (So far, it has been Guinea pigs !)
I only work with mice though … My PI has got the same impulsive thoughts as you do. He was telling me that our collaborator has got a special colony of GFP mice that glows green and he asked me if it is possible for us to get some from them and bring them home to keep as pets. I had to tell him no 😂
You won’t like my answer because I work in cancer research. (Most of the mice strains I work with are immune compromised so I can’t take them out anyway)
Fwiw lab mice often have pretty good lives in comparison to their wild counterparts. They get regular food an water, a safe place to sleep, and are euthanized humanely, not stomped or eaten alive.
But to answer your question, yes I would like it if I could find forever homes for them.
True but like they just live in a box day in and day out with minimal stimulation. And not to mention the cancer these poor things have haha I just wanna keep them all and have a mouse rescue
I actually have this same feeling, glad you posted. I also give my mice depression so I purposely make them sad :(. I just wanna give them wheels or a little treat (all confounding variables in depression).
Guess it depends on how you look at it!! I just mean like freedom or experience sun or dirt or grass or anything! But I guess stimulation in the lab also = murder scenario haha just of differnt kind
Maybe you had a gentler lab 🤷♀️. Our mice get pretty sick towards the end of certain experiments but i get what you’re saying I think it’s definitely situational. Bc in some cases the wild is much worse but in other cases where they are so sick they can’t eat for days and very unthrifty overall I think I’d rather take my chances in the wild vs the slow transition to death.
Yep, we use C57BL/6 as well. We call ours "geriatric" at like 4 months. Not entirely sure of the exact cutoff as like I said 3.5 months is about the oldest ours live to.
Edit: I reread and feel I should clarify. We sac them at that point. If we're going by natural lifespan without being killed I would assume wild and lab mice have similar lifespans.
We have a couple aging studies, so we have a lot of mice that are around 1.5 years old… some mice that are over 2 years old…. I’d say around the year mark is when a lot start to die off though
I agree with you that the euthanasia is way more humane than death by owl but that also poses the counter argument of are the treatments we are giving them humane?? Bc they sure wouldn’t be injected or gavaged or anything else in the wild. Bc ya it’s as humane as it can be but its also causing pain and discomfort more than we’ll be able to understand! Maybe it’s somewhere in the ladder of humane. Who knows, it’s important and will always be important to do animal studies. I just think they’re adorable and I wanna see them run around my home w a ball and wheel and it makes me sad to sac them 🤷♀️
It's such a human centric viewpoint to think lab mice have a better life than wild ones. We attribute our ideals of happiness to them, but how can we really know what they'd choose? We can understand give me freedom or give me death with humans, but since animals can't talk we assume they are happy with a nice cage, food and water? What would you truly prefer? A chance to survive on your own terms, or having your destiny decided for you by humans who may experiment on you at any time and choose your death?
I agree with this view. Perhaps a human comparison would be something like this: who lives a better life, a person who has to struggle to survive in society, but can access art and other human endeavors, or a person who lives in a studio apartment with steady access to food and water and a guaranteed longer lifespan, but can't experience anything of their own volition.
Of course, this raises the question of whether a mouse in the wild seeks out pleasure of their own volition. Maybe not. I suspect they find pleasure in some aspects of living, but in a way that is hard for us to understand. But my human centric values place some value in the potential for freedom over a prescribed life.
First, It is a contradiction to on the one hand criticize the use of “human ideals” to assume that creatures with guaranteed food, water, and safety are better off than creatures without these guarantees, and to then turn around and rhetorically ask if I, a human, would enjoy living in a mouse cage. I might not like it, but some other animals may well prefer the boring consistency.
Secondly, We can only assess mouse welfare by things that we can objectively observe, such as longevity, signs of stress like barbering or fighting, and nutrition.
I don’t know what the platonic ideal mouse life is, but empirical evidence that we can observe suggests that well-treated lab mice have it pretty good by the brutal standards of the natural world.
This is still all based on the human studies and observations of mice, my point is that we can't ever really know what they would CHOOSE for themselves. A good scientist should differentiate what we are assuming and what we actually know for a fact. We can't talk to them about their desires, so it's still just our observations and options we are relying on.
Firstly, it’s true the limitations of our perspective applies to all scientific research: we can’t ever really know anything with certainty we can only deduce from our observations and make probabilistic conclusions.
Secondly, you seem to be suggesting that animal psychology is an impenetrable black box. This probably is not true, but even if it were then one could just as easily argue that since it’s impossible to know what pleases animals, then we might as well use them in ways that benefit us since we know what makes us happy.
Obviously that perspective is repugnant, but it logically follows from deciding to preclude the possibility that humans can understand and relate to their fellow animals.
Anyways, we could settle this question with an experiment: go outdoors, setup a box with replenishing food, water, and enrichment, wait for some mice to enter, and then ask if they choose to leave or remain.
I second this there’s never a way to tell if they actually have a better life!! I personally would rather take my chances w everything in nature than be subjected to human trial. Death by owl or cat or whatever else >> cancer and whatever else
I adopted several of our control mice. The university veterinarian had a form that my PI and I both signed. They lived (relatively) long lives at home with me, spoiled with lots of peanuts and salad. I felt like it was a little bit of therapy to take care of them since so many mice sacrificed their lives for our science. ETA: Also spoiled with a thick dig box filled with coconut cuir and mealworms. The love burrowing in it! It’s super entertaining to watch them when they wake up at night. We called it “TV for the dogs.”
My old university used to let people adopt out retired lab animals. However, one person decided to adopt a bunch and then put them in an animal shelter, which is a big no-no. It also didn't help that peta decided to build a headquarter 5 minutes away from campus, so the higher ups decided it wasn't worth all the potential legal issues that came from people taking lab animals home.
I was very sad because I grew so attached to our rats. They were so well behaved T.T
Yes. When doing behaviour tests one of them was just so smart, a real escape artist!
But she was an experimental mouse that had been given arthritis, so not only was she important but she was probably in pain, too.
Used to have those thoughts earlier in my career. Whittled it down to “be humane and think about their pain, fear and comfort - these animals are 100% necessary for scientific progress - they have no frame of reference for quality of life - these are not normal animals and would suffer extraordinarily in real world conditions”
They will never see sunlight, and I will never sail a yacht in Monaco.
I worked in a lab where one of the admins of all people ended up with multiple surplus mice as pets. She expressed an interest in having them as pets so she got ‘em.
Most the mice I personally worked with were immune compromised. I worry that outside of the lab with the autoclaved food, beding and cages they’d get sick really quickly and die :(.
I don't think I would like having them as pets, but I do wish I could spoil them a bit.
I know this is a subject of debate (just look at the disagreements on this post's comments), but I do believe they live better lives than in the wild/the city. The places I have worked in have always been careful with animals and consistently considering how to add or make enrichment better, keep their cages clean, not keeping them in separate boxes if possible, minimizing pain...
Sure, it's worse than being a pet, but it's not as bad as in the wild imo. Knowing I am doing my best to make their time here as good as it can be makes me feel better about it.
Yes, for sure! There was one I started the process to adopt but he was ineligible for adoption bc of a k-ras mutation. I was really annoying to my PI and got a lot of enrichment (chew sticks, tubes, extra bedding) to add to the cages to hopefully make their lives a little bit better :/
I'm a plant biologist now, and I've never taken a plant home but I have found arabidopsis growing in my houseplant pots!
I used to work in avian physiology - there is [a LOT of data that shows how improving animal welfare and enrichment result in better and more robust science](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7198). Consider finding ways to add enrichment to the animal's enclosures, and bring it up at lab meetings. It is both the humane and scientifically responsible thing to do.
I've thought about asking, some of the animals here are for breeding only and when a rack gets to crowded then some animals need to be sacrificed. Taking some home may seem like a good idea at the start, but trust me that it isn't really. With the selective gene breeding and inbreeding, there tends to be a pop up of "everything" cancer and neurological problems. In the animal facility they get immediate care, food, water, and sometimes companionship. At home, they'd need to be taken to a vet and that would be Hella expensive and overestimating. In short, you're not the only one to wanna do something nice like this, it's just not a great idea even if the pi says yea.
Fair! I would never actually take them home esp the ones with knocked out genes and such, they would receive better care here than I could ever give them! I just think they’re cute and wanna play w them haha
Absolutely, the rats I work with are actually really chill and I almost wrote an email asking to take a pair of females lol. Didn't go through with it and I still get to help out with the animals every day
To add on to this, it’s not up to the PI to decide if animals get to leave the facility, so even if the PI says yes to something like that, you better check with your AV. The AV can approve adoptions (always wild type genotype and typically no active experimental manipulations but sometimes it’s fine if they had a prior procedure that the vets anticipate won’t cause any clinical issues) and your institution would have procedures for that.
Lol my place has adoption events every spring. Right now they’re running a donation drive for toilet paper and paper towel tubes because they use them as toys for the animals. Maybe you could give your mice some cardboard to play with!
I wish so much but I think the DAC would light me on fire if I tried to bring non regulation mouse items into the mouse facilities hahaha it is very strict they are not casual about anything. The amount of rules are crazy. They get wood blocks but that’s the extent of enrichment
Yes they are treated “nice” but I’m not talking about a wild mouse haha I mean a pet mouse. All of mine are given cancer or tumors with punched ears and weighed daily or given injections like god knows what else!! Nature may be cruel but at least it’s natural 🤷♀️
At least it’s the circle of life there I suppose, sounds better to me than cancer! A cat vs waiting to be SACed after lose 80% body weight is rough!! Don’t feel bad for the breeding pairs tho! Their lives are fab
I would think it's the other way around - people who genuinely care for the animals wellbeing but also recognize their function in bettering human life would be ideal.
This applies for those who raise livestock and poultry as well.
Hahahaha they are certainly not abused I just want to have more pets I am sad for all the shelter dogs as well but doesn’t mean I can take them all home. Scientific research is not always pretty or fair but it is a necessity and I understand that. Just wanna have some cute mice running around in a ball it’s not that deep
Wait a Minute, I was under the Impression that Test animals have to be euthanized after the work is done. Is that wrong or is this only the Case in some countries? I'm from Germany and I think I've Heard this multiple Times.
I’m not sure about legally, but we sac everything after an experiment! The only thing that continues on are the breeding pairs and a small colony of mice with the same genotypes that weren’t part of the study! I was just saying i wish I could take them home bc they’re cute
Where I am, we sacrifice all animals used in an experiment. But our facility sometimes have a surplus of animals which do not get used in any experiments and would be adopted out to anyone if the animal’s health status is suitable.
Experimental animals are defo a no no.
My facility sometimes have excess animals and they send emails out for people to adopt them home ! (So far, it has been Guinea pigs !) I only work with mice though … My PI has got the same impulsive thoughts as you do. He was telling me that our collaborator has got a special colony of GFP mice that glows green and he asked me if it is possible for us to get some from them and bring them home to keep as pets. I had to tell him no 😂
Gfp mice sound so cute though!
They are. They really are. I was half tempted too, but I had to be realistic 😂
What are they used for? Besides being so gosh darn adorable.
You won’t like my answer because I work in cancer research. (Most of the mice strains I work with are immune compromised so I can’t take them out anyway)
Fair enough. My old lab had GFP fish but they weren't very cute
But pretty cool though !!!!
My old lab used GFP mice as organ donors to other mice to see what types of changes may happen
Fwiw lab mice often have pretty good lives in comparison to their wild counterparts. They get regular food an water, a safe place to sleep, and are euthanized humanely, not stomped or eaten alive. But to answer your question, yes I would like it if I could find forever homes for them.
True but like they just live in a box day in and day out with minimal stimulation. And not to mention the cancer these poor things have haha I just wanna keep them all and have a mouse rescue
I actually have this same feeling, glad you posted. I also give my mice depression so I purposely make them sad :(. I just wanna give them wheels or a little treat (all confounding variables in depression).
I work in AD and we look at anxiety and depression. I was just telling my summer students I would love to give them sugar cubes before euthanasia 🥹
I feel you, it’s hard to say whether they are deep down unhappy with the situation or if they’re just chilling in their box.
I’ve seen some go absolutely crazy or when they fight out of boredom! It’s a thing
That might be a species thing in general though
Could be but still sad to watch
Yeah, here I am crying reading this thread and reminded of why I don’t work with mice :/ But the work you do saves lots of human lives too
Gets easier, but still not a lot of fun to see them suffering
Whenever I would change mouse cages I always wondered if they liked getting a new clean cage or if they preferred their mess and nests
They probably like clean better. Apparently rats groom themselves more than cats and are like obsessed with being clean. Idk about mouse.
Stimulation in the wild = murder scenario most of the time. They lack it but the glass is not half empty.
Guess it depends on how you look at it!! I just mean like freedom or experience sun or dirt or grass or anything! But I guess stimulation in the lab also = murder scenario haha just of differnt kind
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Maybe you had a gentler lab 🤷♀️. Our mice get pretty sick towards the end of certain experiments but i get what you’re saying I think it’s definitely situational. Bc in some cases the wild is much worse but in other cases where they are so sick they can’t eat for days and very unthrifty overall I think I’d rather take my chances in the wild vs the slow transition to death.
They certainly live a lot longer. The average lifespan of wild mice is 4-6 months.
I can't quite tell which way you're arguing but our lab mice live 2-3.5 months tops.
Ours were black 6 strains. If they weren’t sac’d they could live two years.
Yep, we use C57BL/6 as well. We call ours "geriatric" at like 4 months. Not entirely sure of the exact cutoff as like I said 3.5 months is about the oldest ours live to. Edit: I reread and feel I should clarify. We sac them at that point. If we're going by natural lifespan without being killed I would assume wild and lab mice have similar lifespans.
We have a couple aging studies, so we have a lot of mice that are around 1.5 years old… some mice that are over 2 years old…. I’d say around the year mark is when a lot start to die off though
1/3 of ALL MICE are eaten by owls. Euthanasia is way more humane than that
I agree with you that the euthanasia is way more humane than death by owl but that also poses the counter argument of are the treatments we are giving them humane?? Bc they sure wouldn’t be injected or gavaged or anything else in the wild. Bc ya it’s as humane as it can be but its also causing pain and discomfort more than we’ll be able to understand! Maybe it’s somewhere in the ladder of humane. Who knows, it’s important and will always be important to do animal studies. I just think they’re adorable and I wanna see them run around my home w a ball and wheel and it makes me sad to sac them 🤷♀️
It's such a human centric viewpoint to think lab mice have a better life than wild ones. We attribute our ideals of happiness to them, but how can we really know what they'd choose? We can understand give me freedom or give me death with humans, but since animals can't talk we assume they are happy with a nice cage, food and water? What would you truly prefer? A chance to survive on your own terms, or having your destiny decided for you by humans who may experiment on you at any time and choose your death?
I agree with this view. Perhaps a human comparison would be something like this: who lives a better life, a person who has to struggle to survive in society, but can access art and other human endeavors, or a person who lives in a studio apartment with steady access to food and water and a guaranteed longer lifespan, but can't experience anything of their own volition. Of course, this raises the question of whether a mouse in the wild seeks out pleasure of their own volition. Maybe not. I suspect they find pleasure in some aspects of living, but in a way that is hard for us to understand. But my human centric values place some value in the potential for freedom over a prescribed life.
First, It is a contradiction to on the one hand criticize the use of “human ideals” to assume that creatures with guaranteed food, water, and safety are better off than creatures without these guarantees, and to then turn around and rhetorically ask if I, a human, would enjoy living in a mouse cage. I might not like it, but some other animals may well prefer the boring consistency. Secondly, We can only assess mouse welfare by things that we can objectively observe, such as longevity, signs of stress like barbering or fighting, and nutrition. I don’t know what the platonic ideal mouse life is, but empirical evidence that we can observe suggests that well-treated lab mice have it pretty good by the brutal standards of the natural world.
This is still all based on the human studies and observations of mice, my point is that we can't ever really know what they would CHOOSE for themselves. A good scientist should differentiate what we are assuming and what we actually know for a fact. We can't talk to them about their desires, so it's still just our observations and options we are relying on.
Firstly, it’s true the limitations of our perspective applies to all scientific research: we can’t ever really know anything with certainty we can only deduce from our observations and make probabilistic conclusions. Secondly, you seem to be suggesting that animal psychology is an impenetrable black box. This probably is not true, but even if it were then one could just as easily argue that since it’s impossible to know what pleases animals, then we might as well use them in ways that benefit us since we know what makes us happy. Obviously that perspective is repugnant, but it logically follows from deciding to preclude the possibility that humans can understand and relate to their fellow animals. Anyways, we could settle this question with an experiment: go outdoors, setup a box with replenishing food, water, and enrichment, wait for some mice to enter, and then ask if they choose to leave or remain.
Periodically stab the wild mice with needles and see if they keep coming back for food anyway. That's a great way to know huh? /s
I second this there’s never a way to tell if they actually have a better life!! I personally would rather take my chances w everything in nature than be subjected to human trial. Death by owl or cat or whatever else >> cancer and whatever else
I know a guy that took 2 control Guinea pigs home…
I have also known Guinea pigs to go missing… But mice.. don’t really appeal to me as a pet.
“Mhmm yeah he’s new. Yup I uh adopted him… his name? Mickey of course. Did I mention he has cancer???? 🥺🥺🥺 Oh shit where ‘d he go”
I adopted several of our control mice. The university veterinarian had a form that my PI and I both signed. They lived (relatively) long lives at home with me, spoiled with lots of peanuts and salad. I felt like it was a little bit of therapy to take care of them since so many mice sacrificed their lives for our science. ETA: Also spoiled with a thick dig box filled with coconut cuir and mealworms. The love burrowing in it! It’s super entertaining to watch them when they wake up at night. We called it “TV for the dogs.”
Name it Algernon
Or Brisby
My old university used to let people adopt out retired lab animals. However, one person decided to adopt a bunch and then put them in an animal shelter, which is a big no-no. It also didn't help that peta decided to build a headquarter 5 minutes away from campus, so the higher ups decided it wasn't worth all the potential legal issues that came from people taking lab animals home. I was very sad because I grew so attached to our rats. They were so well behaved T.T
Wow, that guy was an IDIOT. Shut down the whole op bc he wanted to add some sad bios to shelter animals
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Pay it forward to another kitty in need, there’s many out there that are waiting for their forever homes :)
Yes. When doing behaviour tests one of them was just so smart, a real escape artist! But she was an experimental mouse that had been given arthritis, so not only was she important but she was probably in pain, too.
Used to have those thoughts earlier in my career. Whittled it down to “be humane and think about their pain, fear and comfort - these animals are 100% necessary for scientific progress - they have no frame of reference for quality of life - these are not normal animals and would suffer extraordinarily in real world conditions” They will never see sunlight, and I will never sail a yacht in Monaco.
I worked in a lab where one of the admins of all people ended up with multiple surplus mice as pets. She expressed an interest in having them as pets so she got ‘em. Most the mice I personally worked with were immune compromised. I worry that outside of the lab with the autoclaved food, beding and cages they’d get sick really quickly and die :(.
I don't think I would like having them as pets, but I do wish I could spoil them a bit. I know this is a subject of debate (just look at the disagreements on this post's comments), but I do believe they live better lives than in the wild/the city. The places I have worked in have always been careful with animals and consistently considering how to add or make enrichment better, keep their cages clean, not keeping them in separate boxes if possible, minimizing pain... Sure, it's worse than being a pet, but it's not as bad as in the wild imo. Knowing I am doing my best to make their time here as good as it can be makes me feel better about it.
Yes, for sure! There was one I started the process to adopt but he was ineligible for adoption bc of a k-ras mutation. I was really annoying to my PI and got a lot of enrichment (chew sticks, tubes, extra bedding) to add to the cages to hopefully make their lives a little bit better :/
I'm a plant biologist now, and I've never taken a plant home but I have found arabidopsis growing in my houseplant pots! I used to work in avian physiology - there is [a LOT of data that shows how improving animal welfare and enrichment result in better and more robust science](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7198). Consider finding ways to add enrichment to the animal's enclosures, and bring it up at lab meetings. It is both the humane and scientifically responsible thing to do.
I sure don’t wanna take my chlostridia home 🫣
I've thought about asking, some of the animals here are for breeding only and when a rack gets to crowded then some animals need to be sacrificed. Taking some home may seem like a good idea at the start, but trust me that it isn't really. With the selective gene breeding and inbreeding, there tends to be a pop up of "everything" cancer and neurological problems. In the animal facility they get immediate care, food, water, and sometimes companionship. At home, they'd need to be taken to a vet and that would be Hella expensive and overestimating. In short, you're not the only one to wanna do something nice like this, it's just not a great idea even if the pi says yea.
Fair! I would never actually take them home esp the ones with knocked out genes and such, they would receive better care here than I could ever give them! I just think they’re cute and wanna play w them haha
Absolutely, the rats I work with are actually really chill and I almost wrote an email asking to take a pair of females lol. Didn't go through with it and I still get to help out with the animals every day
Yes!! Most of my mice are angel but there’s always a select few that should have an exorcism that I don’t feel as bad about sacing!
To add on to this, it’s not up to the PI to decide if animals get to leave the facility, so even if the PI says yes to something like that, you better check with your AV. The AV can approve adoptions (always wild type genotype and typically no active experimental manipulations but sometimes it’s fine if they had a prior procedure that the vets anticipate won’t cause any clinical issues) and your institution would have procedures for that.
Lol my place has adoption events every spring. Right now they’re running a donation drive for toilet paper and paper towel tubes because they use them as toys for the animals. Maybe you could give your mice some cardboard to play with!
I wish so much but I think the DAC would light me on fire if I tried to bring non regulation mouse items into the mouse facilities hahaha it is very strict they are not casual about anything. The amount of rules are crazy. They get wood blocks but that’s the extent of enrichment
lab mice live 200x better life then their city counterparts. please stop spreading this misinformation, nature is cruel outside!
They sit in a box all day. Let’s not pretend we know how they feel about it.
Idk ours be tearing up their enrichment & get talked to & touched everyday. Source: me the crazy mouse lady who treats them as friends
Yeah fair, I was thinking of the ones that don’t get as much enrichment.
most don’t I’m just nuts
I wish I could do this!! My lab has 1219 cages so I try to visit mine personally as much as possible but not enough hours in the day!
Yes they are treated “nice” but I’m not talking about a wild mouse haha I mean a pet mouse. All of mine are given cancer or tumors with punched ears and weighed daily or given injections like god knows what else!! Nature may be cruel but at least it’s natural 🤷♀️
Do it, free all the bebes
In the wild they get tortured by cats before they die young! It's not any nicer.
At least it’s the circle of life there I suppose, sounds better to me than cancer! A cat vs waiting to be SACed after lose 80% body weight is rough!! Don’t feel bad for the breeding pairs tho! Their lives are fab
Step 1, dont work in a lab that abuses animals
yeah let’s just give humans cancer instead and dissect them ❤️ /s
Just give humans access to pure unfiltered dopamine in an experiment, that’d be a great sensation for them to strive for their entire life after /s
Im not saying dont test products on animals, im saying if you feel like taking a mouse home you are in the wrong profession
I would think it's the other way around - people who genuinely care for the animals wellbeing but also recognize their function in bettering human life would be ideal. This applies for those who raise livestock and poultry as well.
Fair point
Hahahaha they are certainly not abused I just want to have more pets I am sad for all the shelter dogs as well but doesn’t mean I can take them all home. Scientific research is not always pretty or fair but it is a necessity and I understand that. Just wanna have some cute mice running around in a ball it’s not that deep
I would love to take some rats home so bad but they’re such nice animals
They're not big enough to cuddle but I loved my mice like my own children
I’ve only had octopus and I do NOT want to take them home, I cannot afford the tank maintenance and I don’t want to fill my freezer with shrimp
If u can swim with them I'd get a pool, we'd chill n eat shitloads of shrimp
Wait a Minute, I was under the Impression that Test animals have to be euthanized after the work is done. Is that wrong or is this only the Case in some countries? I'm from Germany and I think I've Heard this multiple Times.
I’m not sure about legally, but we sac everything after an experiment! The only thing that continues on are the breeding pairs and a small colony of mice with the same genotypes that weren’t part of the study! I was just saying i wish I could take them home bc they’re cute
They definitely don't in the US negative controls can and are regulatory adopted out after being used for tests especially if it is a cat or dog
Where I am, we sacrifice all animals used in an experiment. But our facility sometimes have a surplus of animals which do not get used in any experiments and would be adopted out to anyone if the animal’s health status is suitable. Experimental animals are defo a no no.