13/10/2021 - Tommaso (ESR #6)
The use of animals in experiments is something very important to all of us, scientists or not. In the past decades, a lot of progress has been made to replace lab animals where possible and a lot of work is still ongoing nowadays. In general, scientists operate following the rules known as the "3Rs", which are hierarchically organized:
- Replacement = Use a model that is not an animal if possible
- Reduction = Use the least amount of animal labs that still allows getting significant data
- Refinement = Give the animals the best conditions possible
In the image here you find a gross representation of the proportion of the animals used in scientific research and here there is a table with the exact percentages [1].
- Mice: 2,92%
- Fish: 14,61%
- Rats: 5,05%
- Birds: 4,21%
- Other mammals: 2,36%
- Reptiles : 0,003%
- Amphibians: 0,28%
- Primates: 0,09%
- Cats: 0,005%
- Dogs: 0,13%
- Horses: 0,30%
References:
- Robinson et al. (2019), The current state of animal models in research: A review, International Journal of surgery, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijsu.2019.10.015