Here’s a roundup of this week’s biggest news stories related to animal research—all the recent media coverage you need to know right now to be the most effective activist for animals in labs.
Abusers Equate Welfare with Torture, Claim “Better” Victims
Rise for Animals, 7/24/2024
Despite industry claims of enhancing animal welfare, practices like selective breeding and genetic modification perpetuate the abuse of animals. True welfare improvements can only come from ending the exploitation of animals in farming and research. 📰 Full Story →
Ethiopian Airlines’ Test-Monkey Shipments to US: Father & Child Detained for Planning PETA Protest
Tatenda Karuwa, 7/19/2024
“Two representatives of the animal rights organization [PETA], together with an 11-year-old boy, were detained by Ethiopian authorities for over 24 hours after planning a protest against Ethiopian Airlines . . . to demand the airline stop shipping endangered monkeys to the U.S.”
“‘We’ve been held here overnight simply for speaking up for monkeys who are suffering because Ethiopian Airlines ships them to laboratories in the US. The real crime is what’s being done to these monkeys.’” 📰 Full Story →
Dog Rescued from Testing Lab Is So Happy to Have His Very First Toy
Alana Francis-Crow, 7/19/2024
“Barkley spent five years of his life in an animal testing lab . . . Horan isn’t sure what, exactly, Barkley went through in his time in the lab. She does know that almost all of his teeth were removed, so clearly, he’s been through a lot.”
“‘He didn’t know what treats were … He didn’t know how to play with our other two dogs,’ Horan told The Dodo.”
“Horan hopes that when people learn about Barkley’s story, it will inspire people to do more research about the effects of animal testing.” 📰🎥 Full Story →
PETA Responds Days After Bainbridge Residents Take Area Leaders to Court Over Monkey Farm
AJ Douglas, 7/19/2024
“‘Things happen behind closed doors,’ said primate scientist with PETA Dr. Lisa Jones Engel . . . She’s talking about a meeting late last year where local leaders gave the green light to a company working to bring a primate breeding facility to the area.”
“A group of neighbors is now taking those leaders to court. They argue the community was not given enough notice about the project and decision-making process at this time.” 📰🎥 Full Story →
Sub-Human? The Psychology of Anthropocentric Exceptionalism
Marc Bekoff, 7/19/2024
“The words we use to refer to humans and other animals deeply matter, and it’s clear that other animals are nonhumans, not subhumans. Humancentric hierarchies are totally misleading, and thinking about ‘higher’ animals and ‘lower’ animals makes no sense. This is not a radical view; it is solid evolutionary biology.”
“Simply put, anthropocentric speciesism doesn’t work, and other animals aren’t less than humans….”
“‘I wrote Sub-Human to invite those engaged in different social justice issues to consider how speciesism is a form of discrimination and oppression interlinked with others. If we were all better aware of the history of animal exploitation and efforts to move past it, we would also see how oppressions based on species, gender, race, and other arbitrary markers have perpetuated each other and, at their core, are the same.” 📰 Full Story →
Not Only Humans, Rats Can Hear Octaves Too
OeAW, 7/19/2024
“A recent study by sound researchers at the Austrian Academy of Sciences has now demonstrated that not only humans but also rats have this ability, which shows that octave equivalence is a natural phenomenon.”
“Her laboratory experiment now suggests that rats communicate with each other through sounds and have a finer acoustic perception than previously assumed.” 📰 Full Story →
Abused Beagles in Envigo Scandal Are Free and Loving SoCal
Marianne Love, 7/19/2024
“ . . . Envigo and its parent company, Inotiv, a leading supplier of beagles for medical research in the U.S., made about $11 million between 2020 and 2022 by selling about 10,000 dogs. Clients included major pharmaceutical companies, research universities and the federal government.”
“Dogs were discovered with their ears partly chewed off, wounds and decaying teeth, eyes burned with caustic chemicals and holes drilled into their skulls . . .‘They were a challenging group,’ . . . ‘Some of them had PTSD and anxiety.’” 📰 Full Story →
Congress Pushing EPA to Set New Timelines for Ending Animal Testing
Stephen Dinan, 7/21/2024
“Congress is preparing a bipartisan punishment for the EPA over its backsliding on deadlines to phase out animal testing. House lawmakers have written language into the report accompanying their funding bill for the [EPA] saying they are ‘concerned’ about the agency’s decision to eliminate a 2025 deadline for reducing testing on dogs and rabbits, as well as another 2035 deadline for ending mammal testing altogether.”
“‘Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to fund EPA’s wasteful animal testing resurgence exposed by WCW including boondoggles like pumping animals’ lungs full of firearms emissions and wildfire smoke and butchering healthy bunnies after using them as sperm donors,’….” 📰 Full Story →
Hens Appear to Blush When Scared or Excited, Researchers Find
Oscar Allen, 7/24/2024
“Mark Twain wrote that ‘Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to’. New research seems to have proved him wrong, however, with the discovery that hens have the capacity to blush and use other forms of facial expression.”
“Facial expressions are an important method by which humans communicate emotions, and research has shown that other mammals – including mice, dogs, cats and pigs – use them to varying degrees.” 📰 Full Story →
Species Spotlight: Ferrets
Rise for Animals, 7/26/2024
Did you know that a group of ferrets is called a “business”? These remarkable, adorable relatives of wolverines, ermines, minks, and weasels have become popular companion animals among humans — and for good reason. Learn all about ferrets here: 📰 Full Story →