The Tale of the Lab Rat

Animal Experimentation is not new to research in Biology, the earliest use of animals to understand biological phenomena dates back to the era of the early Greek physician-scientists such as Aristotle (384–322BC). However, the association with our little furry friends started where most stories ended—the Black Death, which killed almost 1/3rd of the population of 14th century Europe. Rats were primarily blamed for spreading the plague. Rising from the ashes of the plague, the new Europeans started becoming wary of rats, and so started the professional influence of the notorious rat-catchers. The rat-catchers used to catch rats from all over Europe, breed them and sell them for rat-baiting, a horrendous sport where Europeans used to bet how much time it would take for a terrier to devour a pit full of rats.

This association, although deleterious, led to the breeding of specific varieties of rats such as the albinos and the hooded strains. These albino rats became the first rats to be experimented on in 1828, for a physiological study based on the effects of fasting on the quality of proteins in the body. After a relatively dormant period, in 1906, the Wistar Institute of Philadelphia was set up. This marked the beginning of a series of selective inbreeding experiments, which standardized rats as the familiar model organisms we use today in labs.

Today we have 117 strains of just albino rats, among many other varieties like Sprague Dawley and Long Evans rat strains. Rats have also had to face stiff competition from their close cousin species—the mice, for the undisputed crown of the most useful model organism. Mice have been used more for genetic experiments because of their easily tractable genome, their smaller sizes and ease of breeding. However, rats are much more useful when it comes to behavioural and physiological experiments, owing to the increased complexity of their brains as compared to mice and also their tendency to mimic human physiological responses.

Today, rodents account for 95% of all laboratory animals and have been used for answering a plethora of questions regarding physiology, immunology, pharmacology, toxicology, nutrition, behaviour and learning. By 2009, mice alone were responsible for three times as many research papers as zebrafish, fruit flies and roundworms combined. Rats and mice have helped us answer numerous research questions and have been used to tackle lethal diseases like HIV-AIDS, cancers, grave neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s, ALS, Parkinson’s and many more.

Without our furry friends, it would have been impossible to solve the mysterious puzzles of biology, so it’s imperative to understand our responsibility in treating them with dignity and respect, inside and outside laboratories alike. We can do this by receiving proper training for animal handling in laboratories and also bearing in mind a general sense of humanity before interacting with any living organism.