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Asked by anon-177292 to Andrew, Becky, Daniel, Helen, Nicola, Urslaan on 15 Jun 2018. This question was also asked by anon-177291.
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Andrew Singer answered on 16 Jun 2018:
I primarily work in the area of microbiology and have recently begun research that includes gammarus (small freshwater shrimp-like critters). There are important regulations in place to prevent harm to animals for research, however, these regulations don’t apply to microorganisms or gammarus, as they are considered too small and unintelligent. That sounds harsh, but if we concerned ourselves with the harm we would bring to microbes from research, you’d never be able to do anything in research or your daily life–every breath you take has microbes in it, which die as they get digested in your stomach. I do feel bad when I have to end the experiments with gammarus–but it’s a quick end. They are instantly frozen in liquid nitrogen. If there’s a way to leave the world (as a gammarus), this is the way to go. No pain.
Having said all that, I sympathise with your question and it pains me to think my gammarus might suffer. Making every experiment count is my way of compensating.
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Becky Thomas answered on 17 Jun 2018:
In every project I do, I always consider the impacts that it might have on the animal species I’m working with. Thankfully now there are so many technologies that allow us to use ‘indirect’ sampling techniques. For example, when we were working on leopards in South Africa, rather than darting the animals and putting collars on them to see where they go, we set up a network of camera traps (which don’t impact the leopards at all). That way we got pictures (and we could identify individual leopards) of when they passed the camera traps, and could see where go.
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Helen Littler answered on 17 Jun 2018:
No, we have to survey before we start to see what might be living there. One of my projects had badgers living under it so we had to build a new sett for them to live it!
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Urslaan Chohan answered on 18 Jun 2018:
I don’t work with animals, so no. Though our lifestyles are killing animals everyday (such as using plastics) – and that includes choices we make at the workplace!
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