Ethics of Research involving animals
Behavioural studies
5.3 One of the great challenges to life scientists is to understand the biological basis of animal behaviour. Why do some birds sing when others do not? Why are some animals monogamous, and others promiscuous? What cues do birds use to navigate when they migrate over long distances?2 How do animals learn and remember? There are many different types of behaviour to understand and many ways to study them. In the category of behavioural studies, we arbitrarily focus on observational research that does not usually involve injections, drawing blood, surgery, dietary manipulation or chemical treatment. They comprise studies in which animals are observed in their natural habitat or in an environment that has been changed for the experiment. In some cases, the welfare of the animals is unaffected. In other cases, some distress may be caused, for example, when animals are tagged in some way. This may involve catching and restraining them for the duration of the identification process. Tagging itself can be invasive and potentially harmful (such as the amputation of a toe, as sometimes done to amphibians, or the use of ’patagial tags’, which are attached to the muscle of fish or blubber of cetaceans) or noninvasive (such as use of a leg ring for birds).3 An animal’s welfare may also be affected if it is released into a foreign environment where it may have to re-establish its territory (see paragraph 4.48).
Observational research
5.4 As an example of observational research, a songbird might be reared in the absence of other birds in order to determine whether the bird would normally learn to sing by hearing the song of other birds, or whether it has an innate ability. In other examples, rats or mice are observed as they run in mazes, swim to rafts or associate a sound or coloured light with the delivery of a ‘reward’, such as food, an aversive stimulus in the form of, for example, a bittertasting substance or a ‘punishment’, such as a minor electric shock, to investigate aspects of learning and memory. The exploratory behaviour of animals on exposure to a novel environment might be studied in order to distinguish the bold from the timid. When behavioural studies are undertaken in a laboratory, an animal’s welfare may be affected if the experimental environment is incompatible with its species-specific needs; for example, if space or environmental enrichments are insufficient or lacking. To explore the cellular and molecular basis of behaviour in more detail, scientists whose work involves animals not only observe the influence of environmental manipulation, but also seek to directly manipulate the animal as we discuss in the following section (see Box 5.1).
Footnotes2 Invasive research on animals that has no expected or direct application to the human species raises different ethical issues
than research which has possible application (see paragraphs 3.52–3.55). See Schrag B, Freeberg T and Anestidou L (2004) The
Gladiator Sparrow: Ethical Issues in Behavioral Research on Captive Populations of Wild Animals: A Case Study with Commentaries Exploring Ethical Issues and Research on Wild Animal Populations Science and Engineering Ethics 10: 717–34