Or stock it with some small fish to eat the larvae, and plants to keep the water clean, and invite some frogs and dragonflies, maybe some mink or herons to keep the frogs and fish in check

Research into building synthetic human bodies would be illegal if you weren’t allowed to test on animals first as the legislation currently stands. The laws on human medical trials often mandate this kind of testing. New vaccines, for example, must be tested on animals (primates) before they are approved by Public Health Agency of Canada. Whether or not that is correct or useful or justified is definitely up for debate, but we would not be able to pursue or utilize any of these advancements or medicines without first changing the regulations. That’s the place to start, for sure.

Also, if you are passionate and interested in this kind of thing, consider reaching out to a local institutional Animal Care Committee to see if they have a spot open for a community member! You’d have to sign a confidentiality agreement at this point in time but maybe you would find something like that very interesting. Many institutions have a stipend for the time spent attending meetings and stuff, it can be quite a time sink for just a volunteer position.

I absolutely agree. There is a push for more openness and transparency in animal research, it is a major initiative of the CCAC for rollout over the next 5 years. There is a lot of fear of animal rights activist groups and litigation or harassment from them that I think is generally unfounded - those incidents are pretty rare. Unfortunately, situations like this with Doug Ford only stoke the fear and protectionist attitudes that need to be broken down… now people in this field feel more targeted and scared and less likely to speak to the public. It’s very counterproductive.

https://ccac.ca/en/animals-used-in-science/transparency/institutional-transparency.html

Dogs are a particularly useful model for heart problems in humans because they naturally get several of the same conditions and diseases humans do. You can try to create genetic variants of mice to have these conditions but it’s not nearly as good as a species that naturally experiences the condition. You may waste hundreds of mouse lives for poor quality research that way.

All studies involving animals require ethical approval involving a detailed assessment of the protocol by a committee that must include veterinarians, managers of the facility (not the lab members but outside of the research team), technicians who work directly with the animals, other researchers doing unrelated work, and a community member otherwise uninvolved in research at all. This is just for the ethical approval, they will also have to go through scientific merit evaluation by a different committee before this step. They must lay out exactly what they are doing and why it is necessary and how they are mitigating pain and distress. They may be under anesthesia for the entire heart attack, and then euthanized without waking up, or receive painkillers and be monitored constantly by a veterinarian. If they don’t do this, the work wont happen, and results wont be publishable either. Without being at that meeting we can’t know the exact technical justification, but there is a very strict process to follow and often everyone has more feelings about it when they are companion animals and they receive a lot of scrutiny.

I’m not all for animal research, some of it is poorly done and wasteful and doesn’t have any practical use. Or the data suffers from human incompetence. But a lot of it does help humans and animals. And there is a lot more tendency to intervene on pain and distress than you’d think - a distressed animal with no pain mitigation is not a good representation for your average human receiving treatment for something at a hospital. Your average local veterinary clinic almost certainly sees far worse cases of neglect and festering horrifying injuries and disease at the hands of incompetent dog owners than a study like this would ever produce.

Yeah not to mention animal testing isn’t just for human medical advancements… a lot of animal testing is to develop treatments for animal diseases, test new diet ingredients (after which the animals are adopted out), etc…

There are national regulations covering animal research under the legislating body, the CCAC.

My family has been doing mixed beef cattle and crops for 5 generations. The land is a bit too tough out there to rely solely on crops, but has some good areas for planting interspersed with hilly areas only really suitable for grazing. Single family mixed farms are still common enough in certain areas, but dwindling, as (often) Chinese mega corps gradually buy up the land and amass what they can. It’s more efficient and there is less concern for stewardship of land that will be passed down to one’s family, so it’s easy for them to be more economically competitive.

For mice it’s tunnel handling, where you just let them walk into a tube and pick that up. You do need to scruff them to hold them for actual procedures and to examine their teeth and stuff, but it’s really stressful for them to be snatched out of their home by the tail.

For rats it’s just picking them up with your hand over their back and under the armpits and then support the bum with your other hand like you would a kitten or any other small domestic critter. Rats are generally more calm and don’t mind being picked up, mice don’t love it and will jump or run away or bite.

It’s a decapi-cone… for euthanasia (sorry)

Can also be used for blood collection tho

I do use it on Safari but I use Firefox/Chrome/Safari on my phone for different things and just happened to be using Chrome already when I looked up the meme 🤷‍♀️

Oh damn sorry, it’s not bad on my phone (not bad meaning no worse than any other website viewed on mobile).

It is very easy to kill crustaceans before boiling them, yes.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/this-kills-the-crab

I live for your memes fossilesque

Looks lovely. How are the bugs now?

It’s interesting, but it’s also completely unrelated aside from a larger discussion about what people can spend their time and energy on? The obvious answer is “people can care about more than one thing” and the secondary response is about how this initiative is easy to participate in compared to limiting climate change. If you could just sign an online petition to limit the effects of climate change I am quite certain it would get just as much or more support… so false equivalency/over exaggeration of what “this kind of rallying support” is. And yeah, limiting climate change directly benefits a lot of people. I would love it if the treasured forests near my home weren’t burning to ash more and more every year, disappearing all the places I loved to go.

That’s rough, sorry you are both dealing with that. Hopefully it is some small consolation that you know you are doing the right thing for him and preventing him from suffering. He is lucky to have you to shower him with love and treats and kisses :)

What’s wrong with the poor guy? He looks thin, but bright

Marijuana and hemp are very different in that way. Marijuana cultivation is often done indoors so pests and things are tightly controlled, and the plants may be grown hydroponically and have to be very productive at growing tightly bunched and sensitive flowers. For hemp, long stringy plants with lots of fiber that grow fast and are much less sensitive, and things like the cleanliness and potential for mold contamination etc doesn’t really matter much. I don’t have any specific stats or anything but I can definitely see how marijuana may use a lot more water.

Machines gotta eat