Living with Lab Mice

4/22/2025 at 5:17:37 PM

Beautiful and unexpectedly poignant. I thought this was a lovely description of the “circle of life”:

> First you are young and look for your place in life; then you are strong and work on your projects; then you slow down; and finally you become part of all there is before you were born.

by pimlottc

4/22/2025 at 4:12:55 PM

> Through spending time with them, I learned that mice are not the kind of beings that most humans think they are.

The same is true of every animal, I find - not only mice, and certainly including humans.

by throwanem

4/22/2025 at 4:23:32 PM

Fortunately we’ve stopped torturing humans for research and exploring them for their skin, labor and flesh.

Hopefully we can find ways to extend that humanity to the other sentient creatures we currently exploit in the hundreds of billions a year.

by addicted

4/22/2025 at 5:17:41 PM

"Exploiting," rather than "exploring," I think perhaps, and to the extent you did not mean that first line as a sarcasm, I would say we have made much albeit faltering progress in recent years. Beyond that I agree with you wholeheartedly.

by throwanem

4/22/2025 at 4:53:07 PM

You should read the entire article.

the mice weren't "nice" because the trauma and fear from laboratory experiences had conditioned them to be wary of human interaction and have a preference for their own species on top of a lack of understanding from humans what behaviors mice actually find comfortable or meaningful.

Only after prolonged, patient interaction, especially with the last mouse, Spokie, did the author experience genuine, reciprocal communication and bonding

by Jimmc414

4/22/2025 at 5:17:24 PM

I did not need to read the article to know something about how laboratory animals behave. As a child I regularly had the company of controls whom my mother opted to smuggle home once their experiments had concluded - rather than, as was officially required in the laboratory technician role from which she has long since retired, euthanize them.

I suppose if the method required for same were not precisely enough specified, we might argue that "safely and peacefully lived out their allotted span of days" still qualifies as the eponymous or nominal "good death." Mama will be 71 this year but has not lost her wits. Would you like me to text and ask if she remembers whether she broke that rule or only bent it?

I certainly will read the article properly, of course. I just haven't yet made the time. But I will note, since you bring it up, that the implicit distinction given there between behaviorist and ethologist as two different kinds of bad is indeed just the sort of distinction a philosopher might draw; that is, valid, nuanced, interesting, and not at all guaranteed to be remotely sound. The prototypical modern ethologist is Jane Goodall, and the one whose work I've myself most closely and productively studied is Mary Jane West-Eberhard.

by throwanem

4/23/2025 at 2:48:46 AM

Kudos to your mom for saving those control animals!

by barbarr

4/23/2025 at 3:21:38 AM

Well, I don't want to make out anyone was trying to really stop her, or not that I recall. It wasn't a big moral stance, there was just no reason they really needed to die.

But you're not at all wrong that she's always been a better person by far than she's in the habit of understanding herself to be, and it has been something of a project of mine in the decade or so since her retirement to amend this regrettable flaw in her normally incisive perception, as and when I'm able. So thank you, in advance on her behalf and right now on mine, for the compliment! I confide she'll appreciate it, when I pass it on in our next talk. (I'm also looking forward to her take on the article, if indeed I decide on reading it that it suffices to merit her attention. Neither she nor I appreciates having her time wasted, after all.)

by throwanem

4/22/2025 at 4:51:57 PM

I recommend gerbils - they don't piss all over the place.

by zabzonk