Giraffes are the latest animals to show they can solve tasks using statistical reasoning – and the only one to do this with a small brain relative to body size.
Although there are rules that govern animal research, they don’t answer one important question: when are the gains from research enough to justify the harms it may inflict?
Animal research’s benefits are clear – but public awareness of what it involves is not.
Javier Pierini/DigitalVision via Getty Images
Guidelines and regulations weigh the medical and health benefits of animal research with researchers’ ability to ensure humane care of their subjects from start to finish.
Research using animals must be more transparent regarding how animals are used and treated.
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The public’s lack of knowledge about animal research can cause a moral conflict. Institutions that use animals in research need to be more transparent about their practices.
Medical research to benefit people is first conducted in animals. Creating a new biomedical model by inserting human immune cells into pigs may lead to new insights and treatments.
The three-toed skink can give birth to live young and lay eggs in the same pregnancy. What can this little critter teach us about the evolution of live birth?
More women are becoming biologists, and this inclusion means that we are learning more about female species and reproduction.
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Since 2012, more than 120 of Britain’s universities, research institutions and pharmaceutical companies have signed a public pledge committing them to greater openness in their animal research programs.
You would need to drink over a thousand bottles of red wine per day to get the amount of resveratrol - the compound said to have many health benefits - needed to even have an effect.
One of Newcastle’s macaque monkeys.
Newcastle University
Slow, lazy, stupid? It’s time to update your impression of the crocodilians. These animals are up to amazing things that we’re only beginning to observe and recognize.
The number of animals used in scientific research in the UK fell by 0.4% in 2013, according to figures released by the Home Office. Scientists continue to work hard to reduce the numbers of animals used…
Brazil’s cattle herd is the world’s second-biggest - and welfare standards are on the up.
Zeloneto/Wikimedia Commons
Monika Merkes, La Trobe University and Rob Buttrose, The University of Melbourne
While Brazil’s footballers have failed spectacularly to live up to expectations, there are other areas where the country is quietly exceeding them. Perhaps surprisingly, Brazil’s rapidly improving animal…