It’s National Wildlife Week, an opportunity to reflect upon the majesty of wild animals and come together in the name of their protection . . . unless you’re part of the billion-dollar animal research industry.
In the world of vivisection, these beacons of nature’s beauty and majesty are dismissively referred to as “Other Animals”, final column numbers entered as numerical values in government filings.
“Other Animals” serves as the description of the final category for which regulated research facilities must report the nonhuman animals exploited during the previous year. Unlike the eight, delineated categories that serve to call attention to a particular type of nonhuman (i.e., “Dogs”), this nondescript category acts as a catchall, forcing thousands upon thousands of individuals under a generic umbrella that belies the devastating complexity of the research industry’s exploitation.
Indeed, wild animals constitute a significant percentage of nonhuman research subjects. A list of the types of wild beings reported by labs in 2021 is included below, and its members range from squirrels to dolphins, deer to bears, bats to sea lions, and mice to moose.
Just as there is no atrocity that researchers will forego inflicting upon nonhumans, there is no life safe from becoming commodified in the name of human curiosity.
If captivity could be described as most difficult for any subset of nonhuman research subjects, it seems assured that it would include wild animals—beings who have resisted domestication by humans and remain fully disposed to freedom and autonomy. Indeed, even animals “who have lived indoors for hundreds of generations, under artificial light and in hermetically sealed cages” retain their natural instincts, “notic[ing] the seasons and adjust[ing] their behavior accordingly….”
Not included in wildlife listings are non-human primates (who are categorized separately), and both cold-blooded animals (including lizards and snakes) and insects—unaccounted for and incalculable numbers of sentient beings who represent an increasing percentage of experimental victims. So, as is the case with all available research data, the harms inflicted upon nonhumans is even more extant than we know.
This National Wildlife Week, please share this post to spread awareness for all of the “others”–the wild, who yearn and are meant to be free.
2021’s “Other Animals” included:
- Addra gazelle
- African elephant
- African Soft-Furred Rat / Multimammate Mouse
- African yellow house bat
- Allegheny Woodrat
- Alpine chipmunk
- Alston’s brown mouse / Short-tailed singing mouse
- American badger
- American beaver
- American bison
- American false vampire bat
- American least shrew
- American marten
- American mink
- American pika
- American pine vole
- American pygmy shrew
- American red squirrel
- American water shrew
- Angolan soft-furred fruit bat / Angolan fruit bat
- Anoa
- Arctic souslik
- Arizona Cotton Rat
- Armenian hamster / Migratory hamster
- ARS birds
- ARS fish
- ARS mice
- ARS rats
- Asian elephant
- Asiatic brush-tailed porcupine
- Aztec Deermouse
- Bare-tailed woolly opossum
- Bearded seal
- Beluga whale
- Big brown bat
- Big-eared opossum
- Bighorn sheep
- Binturong
- Black rhinoceros
- Black-and-rufous elephant shrew
- Black-banded squirrel
- Black-footed ferret
- Black-shouldered opossum
- Black-tailed prairie dog
- Bobcat
- Bongo
- Botta’s pocket gopher
- Bottlenose dolphin
- Brazilian free-tailed bat
- Brow-antlered deer / Eld’s deer
- Brown bear
- Brown long-eared bat
- Brush mouse
- Bryant’s woodrat
- Burchells / Grants / Chapmans / Plains zebra
- Bushy-tailed woodrat
- Cactus mouse
- Cairo spiny mouse
- California bat
- California mouse
- California pocket mouse
- California rock squirrel
- California sea lion
- California vole
- Canadian lynx
- Cape ground squirrel
- Cape Porcupine
- Caribbean manatee
- Caribou
- Cave Myotis
- Central American cacomistle
- Cheetah
- Chisel-toothed kangaroo rat
- Colonial Tuco-Tuco
- Common mole-rat
- Common tree shrew
- Cotton Deermouse
- Coyote
- Damara / Damaraland mole-rat / Damaraland blesmol
- Deer mouse
- Degu
- Desert cottontail rabbit
- Desert kangaroo rat
- Desert pocket mouse
- Desert woodrat
- Douglas’s squirrel
- Dromedary camel
- Dusky-footed woodrat
- Eastern chipmunk
- Eastern cottontail rabbit
- Eastern fox squirrel
- Eastern grey kangaroo
- Eastern grey squirrel
- Eastern mole
- Eastern pipistrelle
- Eastern shrew-mouse
- Eastern woodrat
- Egyptian fruit bat
- Elk
- Ermine
- European Common vole
- Evening bat
- False killer whale
- Fat-tailed dunnart
- Fisher
- Four-striped grass mouse
- Four-toed hedgehog
- Fringed bat
- Gambian pouched rat / Northern giant pouched rat
- Gappers red-backed vole
- Giraffe
- Golden-mantled ground squirrel
- Grassland rat
- Gray fox / Grey fox
- Gray wolf / Grey wolf / Timber wolf
- Greater bushbaby
- Grevy’s zebra
- Grey four-eyed opossum
- Grey red-backed vole
- Grey seal
- Grey short-tailed opossum
- Grizzly Bear
- Groundhog / Woodchuck
- Guadalupe fur seal
- Gunnison’s prairie dog
- Hairy-tailed mole
- Harbor seal
- Harris’s antelope squirrel
- Hawaiian monk seal
- Hinny
- Hippopotamus
- Hispid cotton rat
- Hispid pocket mouse
- Hoary bat
- House mouse / lab mouse
- House shrew
- Idaho ground squirrel
- Indian grey mongoose
- Indian rhinoceros
- Jaguar
- Jamaican fruit-eating bat / Jamaican fruit bat
- Kemps spiny mouse
- Killer whale
- Kinkajou
- Large mouse-eared bat
- Largha seal
- Least chipmunk
- Lesser Egyptian jerboa
- Lesser kudu
- Lion
- Little brown bat
- Little pocket mouse
- Lodgepole chipmunk
- Long-footed bat
- Long-tailed pocket mouse
- Long-tailed weasel
- Lump-nosed bat
- Marsh rice rat
- Masked shrew
- Meadow jumping mouse
- Meadow vole
- Merriam’s kangaroo rat
- Mexican long-eared bat
- Mongolian gerbil
- Moose
- Mountain beaver
- Mule deer
- Muskox
- Muskrat
- Naked mole-rat
- Nile rat
- Nine-banded armadillo
- North American black bear
- North American porcupine
- North American river otter
- Northern elephant seal
- Northern flying squirrel
- Northern fur seal
- Northern grasshopper mouse
- Northern pygmy mouse
- Northern red-backed vole
- Northern short-tailed shrew
- Northern tree shrew
- Norway rat / lab rat
- Nubian ibex
- Oaxacan Big-toothed Deer mouse
- Ocelot
- Oldfield mouse
- Ord’s kangaroo rat
- Pallas’s long-tongued bat
- Pallid bat
- Parnell’s mustached bat
- Patagonian cavy / Mara
- Pinyon mouse
- Plains pocket gopher
- Polar bear
- Prairie vole
- Pronghorn
- Puma / Mountain lion / Cougar
- Pygmy squirrel
- Raccoon
- Red bat
- Red fox (includes Silver fox & Cross fox)
- Red kangaroo
- Red Tree Vole
- Red wolf
- Reeve’s muntjac
- Reindeer
- Ring-tailed lemur
- Ringed seal
- Ringtail
- Royal antelope
- Sable antelope
- Sea otter
- Seba’s short-tailed bat
- Seminole bat
- Senegal bushbaby
- Serval
- Shadow Chipmunk
- Shortfinned pilot whale
- Silky pocket mouse
- Silver-haired bat
- Slender-tailed meerkat
- Small Indian mongoose
- Smoky shrew
- Snowshoe hare
- Southeastern bat
- Southern bog lemming
- Southern flying squirrel
- Southern multimammate mouse
- Southern plains woodrat
- Spiny Mouse
- Springbok
- Star-nosed mole
- Steller / Stellers / Northern sea lion
- Stephen’s kangaroo rat
- Striped ground squirrel
- Striped hyena
- Striped skunk
- Sugar glider
- Swift fox
- Syrian / Golden hamster
- Tail-less tenrec
- Thicket rat
- Thirteen-lined ground squirrel
- Tiger
- Townsend’s chipmunk
- Turkish Spiny Mouse / African Spiny Mouse
- Virginia opossum
- Western harvest mouse
- Western mastiff bat / Western bonneted bat
- Western spotted skunk
- White rhinoceros
- White-footed mouse
- White-nosed coati
- White-tailed antelope squirrel
- White-tailed prairie dog
- White-throated woodrat
- Wild boar
- Woodland jumping mouse
- Yellow armadillo