• Question: Do you use animals in your work? If so, what animals do you use? and Why not any other animal?

    Asked by stakernathan to David, Rebecca, Simon, Verity, Wei on 15 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by ukxspidermanzz, beth1, samanthadunn03, laurenfarley, duckie.
    • Photo: David Armstrong

      David Armstrong answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      We don’t use any animals in my research.

    • Photo: Rebecca Handley

      Rebecca Handley answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      I don’t use animals, I don’t like the idea of testing on animals but as a scientist I can see the value of animal experiments – I’d just never want to do any myseld. I wouldn’t be able to harm an animal, even if its just a mouse! I’d much rather use a human volunteer.
      But other people who work on the bacteria I do, use ferrets! Ferrets are used, as mice and rats do not have the same reaction to the bacteria as humans do, so we wouldn’t learn anything important from the experiments. Ferrets are used as they are small, easy to keep and breed quickly, which makes them cheap!

    • Photo: Wei Xun

      Wei Xun answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      No I don’t use animals, our subjects are people who we observe and see what would happen naturally.

    • Photo: Verity Nye

      Verity Nye answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      I study the animals that live at hydrothermal vents so I only work with the animals we find in these environments, not any other animals. I figure out what species they are and if they’re a new species I describe them. Some of the work I do is based on video footage of the animals in their natural environment. Recently I’ve have been working on shrimp, snails and amphipods (a bit like small shrimp) because these are what live at the vent site I’ve been working on.

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