• Question: How many different animals do you think you research on?

    Asked by KaiWells145 to Adam on 22 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Adam Hargreaves

      Adam Hargreaves answered on 22 Jun 2017:


      Hi KaiWells145,
      Not sure if you mean how many species or how many individual animals, so I’ll answer both.
      For species, probably hundreds! Whenever I do an analysis I also include other scientists data on different species I’m not working on, that way I can look at (for example) all reptiles, and not just the few snake species I have data for. That means that any results from experiments are a lot more reliable and anything concluded from them has a higher likelihood of being correct.
      For individual animals, as few as possible. Nowadays it is actively encouraged (and in a lot of cases mandatory) to follow the 3Rs, which stand for the Replacement, Refinement or Reduction of animals in scientific research. This means using the least number of animals as possible, and collecting as much data as possible so that in future we won’t need to use animals anymore because we’ll already have the data we need.

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