• a_little_red_rat [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      55 minutes ago

      I’m conflicted bc I’m vegan too but I also love rats enjoying themselves (I take care of a mischief) and could see myself build cars for them lol

      but yeah the experiment probably ended with the poor souls being killed off bc science still hasn’t found a way of keeping them alive I guess. I’m friends with a rescue group and it’s literally illegal for labs to give away animals after experiments, no matter if it’s non-invasive behavioural shit, they need to be killed. The group does some backroom deals to get the rodents out

      death to SScientists I guess

      also the rats in the thread pic look like one of ours, Jelly (and two previous, Soy and Peanut)

  • Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    6 hours ago

    fuck the amount of sucking up to Elon that’s going to happen over the next years from the scientific community

    nobody wants to have their grant money yanked i totally get it. but he doesn’t care, he’s not reading your articles, he’s coming for you all stop sucking up to him

    • qcop [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      6 hours ago

      And then gas them once they are done and just buy a new batch for the next experiment they devised…

      Animal breeding facilities for laboratories are also abhorrent.

  • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 hours ago

    Has to be one of the best jobs on the planet. Getting paid to bring joy to rats, and then studying ways to enhance that joy.

    EDIT: Turns out this may actually be a horrific job despite getting to witness and create temporary joy, see comments below

    • dat_math [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      3 hours ago

      From the article in Neuroscience about the 12 week experiment (CW clinical gore):

      spoiler

      Long-Evans male (N = 20) and female (N = 20) rats, approximately 6 weeks of age, were obtained from Envigo (Madison, WI, USA).

      After completing all behavioral assessments, rats were anesthetized by exposure to isoflurane and were transcardially perfused at 40 mL/min using a MasterFlex L/S perfusion pump (Cole Parmer; Vernon Hills, IL, USA). During perfusions, approximately 100 mL of phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) solution was pumped through the brain to clear all blood, followed by approximately 200 mL of 4 % paraformaldehyde for tissue fixation purposes. Brains were then extracted and divided sagittally so that the right hemisphere could be processed using the FD Rapid GolgiStain TM Kit (FD NeuroTechnologies, Inc., Columbia, MD, USA), and the left hemisphere could be used for immunohistochemical processing.

      Long Evans rats mean life expectancy is about 3 years. This is one of the tamer experimental protocols, where the animals were not required to undergo terrifically disfigurative surgery to collect data or control conditions in vivo. I have great difficulty imagining how hard it would be to become even slightly attached to those animals and still complete the research duties.