Joan comments: Jeez! My main reaction to these posts is "poor kittie cats!"
I have many recollections from graduate school of sharing the elevator with a lab cat and a graduate researcher. The cat was being escorted from the cat colony on one floor to the vision lab on another floor. The cat and grad student would walk onto the elevator side-by-side, get off together at the appropriate floor, and walk together down the hall to the lab. I've seen videos of cats in this lab leaping up into their operant box to begin data collection. In this lab, the cats were trained psychophysical observers. When they made the correct choice in a sensory discrimination task, they were rewarded with a dollop of pureed meat (fresh from the Gerber's jar). The cats went to "work" with their tails erect and their ears perked. They were great fun to watch. I know that not all research involving cats has such a benign face. My husband did a post-doc in which he did single unit recordings of auditory cells in the cat. As with the Hubel and Weisel work, the recordings must be followed by a histological study of the location and type of cells that gave rise to the recording. My husband would come home from a long night at the lab at apologize to our cat (the data collection always continued as long as possible - frequently all night long and into the next day - to ensure that the maximum amount of data can be gathered from each cat, who gives its life for the research). Our understanding of vision and audition is founded on these studies. There is a great cost to the animals. But would you give up the medical advances in the treatment of hearing and vision loss that has been possible because of this work? And before we begin beating the drums of speciesism, remember that this research also has veterinary consequences. The dog lab at my graduate school was involved in the research associated with the development of all those reduced-calorie chows we buy for our overweight animals (while also learning some important things about basic mechanisms of taste perception). I love my cats as much as anybody (and am mourning the loss of my 20-year old feline buddy). But we need to remember to weigh the benefits as well as the costs associated with research that produces pain or harm to animal subjects. If we only focus on the consequences for the animals, we do the researchers and the discipline a disservice. Claudia Stanny --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
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