Study Finds Mice Express Pain Facially; Just Like Us

Study Finds Mice Express Pain Facially; Just Like Us

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posted by: alicia graef 23 hours ago

A new study published on Sunday in the journal Nature Methods has concluded mice make facial expressions when they're in pain.

Jeffrey Mogil at McGill University in Montreal, Canada worked with colleagues and Kenneth Craig, a psychologist who studies human pain at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, to develop a mouse grimace scale.

According to the Telegraph, This was done by injecting stomachs and paws with pain-inducing substances, including acetic acid, mustard oil, and capsaicin, the ''hot'' ingredient in chillies.

Animals were also injected with a chemical that triggers bladder cystitis, and made to suffer nerve damage.

The ''pain faces'' were identified by comparing video images of non-suffering mice with those in pain.

They were listed as: orbital tightening (eye squeezing), nose bulge - a rounded extension of skin on the bridge of the nose - bulging cheeks, ears drawn apart and back, and whiskers held against the face or standing on end.

This was apparently justified by saying that no study has ever been conducted to study facial reactions to pain, or to determine whether facial reactions were corresponding to being tortured, despite clear evidence that animals do make facial expressions to show emotion and communicate.

Mogil reportedly didn't want the photos published because of the potential backlash from animal rights activists, but Wired's got the photos, if you care to see the faces of bad science.

He was also right, people who care about animal suffering were outraged.

''People should be clear that this study was not in any way intended to improve or positively impact on the welfare of mice (or any other animal). It was not intended in anyway to mitigate painful situations for mice used in research, rather just to find a new way of determining if a mouse is showing signs of pain, said Dr Ned Buyukmihci, veterinary adviser at the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV).

Maybe this study will have everyone thinking a little harder about why birds, rats and mice aren't covered under the Animal Welfare Act, since they can suffer after all.
Read more: mice, animal welfare, animal testing, animal cruelty, mouse grimace scale, mice facial expressions, mice pain

Lufthansa Airlines Transports Beagles Testing Laboratories

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We recently obtained heartbreaking photos showing at least 50 beagles confined to crates and loaded like cargo on a Lufthansa transport plane. The beagles were destined for a Charles River Laboratories (CRL) animal-testing facility in Scotland where they will likely be poisoned and killed in drug and pesticide tests.

CRL condemns tens of millions of animals to confinement, poisoning, mutilation, and death in its own laboratories and those of its customers. The company was recently fined $14,000 after 32 monkeys were cooked to death when a room at its facility in Reno, Nev., overheated.

By transporting these animals, Lufthansa is facilitating and profiting from the abuse of animals in laboratories. Please take a moment to let Lufthansa know that this practice is unacceptable.


Send a quick e-mail to Lufthansa vice president Jens Bischof and urge him to join other progressive airlines like Qantas and Cathay Pacific by enacting a policy against transporting animals destined for use in laboratories.

Tell Airline to Stop Transporting Animals to Laboratories

Thank you for giving a voice to animals in need!

Sincerely,
Justin Goodman
Research Associate Supervisor
Laboratory Investigations Department

Exposed: Animal Suffering at University of Utah.

Fran ~ Unshakable Resolution for Saving Animals




..For more than eight months in 2009, a PETA investigator worked undercover inside the laboratories of the University of Utah (UU) in Salt Lake City and documented miserable conditions for and terrible suffering of the dogs, cats, monkeys, rats, mice, rabbits, frogs, cows, pigs, and sheep confined there. ....Our investigator learned that homeless dogs and cats—obtained for a few dollars from area animal shelters through an archaic Utah state "pound-seizure" law, which requires government-funded shelters to turn animals over to laboratories that request them—were used in invasive, painful experiments and killed. ....A pregnant cat pulled out of the Davis County animal shelter gave birth to eight kittens the very day she arrived at UU's laboratories. When the kittens were just 7 days old, a chemical was injected into their brains to cause fluid to build up. After the surgery, the distressed cat—who showed great affection for her kittens before they were taken for the experiment—stopped nursing her babies, and they all died. In other experiments, a cat named Robert, who was also bought from the Davis County animal shelter, had a hole drilled into his skull and electrodes attached to his brain, and dogs bought from a local shelter had their necks cut open so that medical devices could be implanted inside.

Undercover Investigation Reveals Cruelty and Neglect in Utah Lab

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Mice and rats were given enormous tumors and painful, deadly illnesses. Rats had holes drilled into their skulls for invasive brain experiments. Monkeys were kept constantly thirsty so that they would cooperate in experiments for a sip of water. Sick and injured animals were denied veterinary care and left to languish and die. ....Incompetence, indifference, and neglect forced many of the animals to endure severe trauma, prolonged suffering, and agonizingly slow and grisly deaths. These are only a few of the widespread instances of cruelty that PETA's investigator observed at UU. ....Please be a voice for the animals suffering at the University of Utah. Urge The Univerity to stop the experiments on homeless and unwanted animals, who depend on shelters for care and safety, immediately. Also, please call on administrators to release to the public complete records on all the animal-based experiments funded by tax dollars, including grant proposals, experimental protocols, veterinary records, and minutes of oversight committee meetings.

A.L.F.- The Ultimate Freedom Movement

Phil

Cathy~Exposing The Truth~



“Animal liberation is the ultimate freedom movement, the ‘final frontier. ’ ” RobinWebb, British ALF Press Officer..





to take immediate and decisive action.

ALF activists operate under cover, at night, wearing balaclavas and ski masks,

and in small cells of a few people. After careful reconnaissance, skilled liberation teams

break into buildings housing animal prisoners in order to release them (e.g. , mink and

coyotes) or rescue them (e.g., cats, dogs, mice, and guinea pigs). They seize and/or




destroy equipment, property, and materials used to exploit animals, and they use arson as

a potent weapon to raze buildings and laboratories to the ground. They have cost the

animal exploitation industries hundreds of millions of dollars. 3 They willfully break the

law because the law wrongly consigns animals to cages and confinement, to loneliness

and pain, to torture and death. They target a wide range of animal exploiters, from

vivisectors and the fur industry to slaughter houses, foie gras producers, and fast food

restaurants.


Resolved not to harm living beings, motivated by love, empathy, compassion, and

justice, animal liberationists are the antithesis of the “terrorists“ that government,

industries, and mass media ideologues impugn them to be. They are not violent

aggressors against life; they are defenders of the peaceable kingdom. They uphold rights

not covered by law, knowing that the legal structure is defined by and for human

supremacists. The goal of the ALF is not simply to liberate individual animals here and

there; it is to free all animals from every form of slavery that binds them to human

oppressors.







The ALF, and the animal rights movement as a whole, is attacking the entire

institutional framework of animal exploitation along with the domineering values,

mindset, identities, and worldviews of the human species.

Although human slavery has been outlawed in “liberal democracies” (while

industries command new slave trades in domestic and foreign sweatshops) where many

dispossessed and disenfranchised groups gain more rights and respect, animal slavery has

become worse than ever. This is the case in the sheer number of animals killed, the

degree of violation of their natural lives (culminating in the technological manipulations

of genetic engineering and cloning), and the intensity of their suffering (as evident in the

horrors of vivisection, fur farming, slaughter houses, mechanized slaughter, puppy mills,

and so on). Animal "Welfare"” laws do little but regulate the details of exploitation.4







Just as nineteenth-century white abolitionists in the U.S. worked across racial

lines to create new forms of solidarity, so the new freedom fighters reach across species

lines to help our fellow beings in the animal world. In this endeavor, they unleash a

frontal assault on the unquestioned mentality that says animals are objects, resources, or

property, and they advance the modern universalization of rights process that is the key

marker of moral progress. 5



By expanding the definition of the moral community, animal liberationists

challenge long-entrenched prejudices. These relate not only to class, gender, race, sexual

orientation, or specific interest group, but also to the human species itself—to the

arrogant conception of its place in the web of life and its ugly, condescending, vicious,

and violent attitudes toward other species. Speciesism is the belief that nonhuman species

exist to serve the needs of the human species, that animals are in various senses “inferior”

to human beings, and therefore that one can favor human over nonhuman interests

according to species status alone. 6 Just like racism or sexism, speciesism creates a false

dualistic division between one group and another in order to arrange the differences

hierarchically and justify the domination of the “superior” over the “inferior. ” Just as

society has discerned that it is prejudiced, illogical, and unacceptable for whites to

devalue people of color and for men to diminish women, so it is beginning to learn how

utterly arbitrary and irrational it is for human animals to position themselves over

nonhuman animals because of species differences. Among animals who are all sentient

subjects of a life, these differences – humanity’s claim to be the sole bearer of “reason”

and “language” – are no more ethically relevant than differences of gender or skin color,

yet in the unevolved psychology of the human primate they have decisive bearing. The

theory—speciesism—informs the practice—unspeakably cruel forms of domination,

torture, violence, and killing.

The animal liberation struggle is the most difficult battle human beings have ever

fought, because it requires universal consent to abandon what most perceive as their

absolute privileges and God-given rights to exploit animals by sole virtue of their human

status. Moreover, where the stakes of human liberation struggles were largely confined to

particular interests, the failure of human beings to win liberation for animals will havecatastrophic and global consequences for all humanity, if for no other reason than

systemic environmental collapse.