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posted by martyb on Thursday August 27 2020, @10:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the insert-witty-Monty-Python-or-HHGTTG-reference-here dept.

Good animal welfare helps lab mice overcome bad things in life:

Research has revealed that anxious and depressed laboratory mice are more disappointed when something bad happens, but their low mood has no effect on how elated they are when something good happens.

[...] Lead researcher, Dr. Jasmine Clarkson said: "Animals have emotions that are affected by what happens to them in their everyday lives. Like us, they can get anxious and depressed, but how does that change their experiences of the good and the bad things in life? We found that anxious and depressed laboratory mice are more disappointed when something bad happens, but their low mood has no effect on how elated they are when something good happens. So if we apply that to the welfare of our lab animals, it means poor welfare still allows animals to appreciate reward but it makes them less resilient and potentially reduce the reliability of biomedical experiments. These are important findings which emphasize the benefits of the highest level of care that we should adhere to."

Sad mice impair experimental reliability?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2020, @12:08PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2020, @12:08PM (#1042636)

    I bet this is just one more (of many) reasons that there is so much difficulty reproducing research results in different labs.