• Question: Do you test on animals?

    Asked by johnfraser to Edd on 21 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Edward Codling

      Edward Codling answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      Hi johnfraser! 🙂

      A great question!

      I do experiments with animals but I don’t hurt them. We do what are known as ‘observational experiments’ which means we simply observe them moving around in different conditions. For example we are interested in the behaviour of baby coral reef fish and we want to see if they respond to sound or chemical signals in the water. This involves us placing a few fish in a tank and then filming them as they swim around.

      I have also done some experiments with human crowds (and we didn’t hurt any humans obviously!). Part of the reason for doing this was because animals are often very difficult to control and we didn’t want to force them to do unnatural behaviour – with humans it was much easier to give simple instructions to them.

      Most scientists don’t want to do tests on animals if they can avoid it – I certainly don’t want to hurt any animals!

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