实验动物 z-bo 2020-11-05 324

　　Freckle is a male rhesus monkey. When he arrived at his new home in Amherst, Massachusetts, USA in 2000, he was warmly welcomed by his companions. But it didn't appreciate it: it "terrorized" a roommate living in the same cage and snatched the other's wool blankets, and after the researchers added new blankets to the other party, it snatched the blankets one after another. , Until it had 10 blankets, but the roommate did not have one. A few months later, Freckle had a new name: Ivan-short for the first tsar in Russian history, "Terror Ivan IV".

　　Freckle or Ivan, who currently lives in Melinda Novak's Non-human Primates Research Laboratory at the University of Massachusetts, may be a bit unusual because of having two names, but Novak said that almost all of its neighbors have At least one nickname. "If you say ‘Kayla and Zoe are performing today’, everyone knows who they are." Novak said, "But if you say ‘ZA-56 and ZA-65 are performing today’, everyone may be dumb."

　　There are many "famous people" among them

　　Researchers once avoided naming laboratory animals. Except for individual laboratory mice, the tens of millions of mice and rats used in American laboratories today have no names. However, reviewing many research projects has shown that most of the 891,161 other experimental animals used in the United States have names, including non-human primates, dogs, pigs, rabbits, cats and sheep.

　　Animals used in research are often named after shampoo, candy, whiskey, family members, movie stars and superheroes. These animals often have the names of Russians, colors, The Simpsons, historical figures, and even researchers' opponents. These "informal" names rarely appear in published articles, with the exception of occasional studies of non-human primates. But these names are often used in daily life.

　　Is this kind of behavior good or bad for scientific research? Some researchers worry that the names may personalize these animals and create associations that may trigger prejudice—for example, the provocative Ivan IV may be considered more cunning than Freckle. But other controversies say that if animals are given names, they will be treated as individuals and should be taken care of more carefully. Cindy Buckmaster, president of the American Society for Laboratory Animal Science and of the Center for Comparative Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, said that this will reduce the pressure on laboratory animals and make research more conducive.

　　In fact, various animals have been named by researchers and kept in people’s memory. For example, the chimpanzee Freud, who was named by the internationally renowned animal behaviorist Jane Goodall and grew up to be a male chimpanzee leader; the young chimpanzee Ham, was sent to outer space in 1961 and survived the flight; Dolly the sheep , The first mammal cloned from adult cells (mammal; mammalian), etc.

　　Regardless of its impact, for many researchers, the time has come to name animals. "Among the people I met, those who said,'I'll work for a researcher who doesn't name animals,' never exceed the number of'one slap'." Buckmaster said, "I asked if they would give The animals are named, and they replied, "Of course."

　　The age of emotional withdrawal

　　When he was a graduate student in the 1970s, animal behaviorist Marc Bekoff used a cat to do research. This cat can quickly grasp the goal of visual discrimination, even after removing part of its visual system. Impressed by this, he named the cat "Speedo" (which implies speed). But some senior researchers do not approve of him doing that. "I said, ‘I named it because it’s an individual, it’s cool and agile’." Bekoff recalled, "My behavior at the time surprised a large group of professors."

　　At that time, what was encouraged was to separate the emotions of the research subjects, so few research projects named laboratory animals. But in the late 1980s, graduate student Mary Phillips spent three years observing 23 laboratories conducting various animal research. As she wrote in the book "Qualitative Sociology" published in 1994, she found that naming animals is extremely rare. Only two laboratories gave names to animals; one of them used the name as a joke; in the other, the person who named the name was a student assistant, and an informal researcher. The researchers told Phillips that they did not name the animals because they had to deal with so many animals and were only interested in using animals as enzyme sources or data points, not themselves. Six of the 27 researchers said they wanted to keep an emotional distance from the experimental animals that would be killed.

　　Buckmaster said that this attitude was once very typical in science. "An old-school researcher often encourages emotional withdrawal," she said. "In their view, if you make your relationship part of your job, you can't collect objective data."

　　In the 1960s, when Jane Goodall first started to study the social group of chimpanzees in Kasakra, Tanzania, after she named the chimpanzees (such as Bare Bum, Paleface, Freud, Fifi), it caused a lot of controversy at the time. "They all have different characteristics from each other, just like human beings." Goodall wrote, her observation aroused widespread doubt at the time.

　　But even at the time, some laboratory animals often had informal names. In the late 1950s, when psychologist Harry Harlow conducted a well-known and often criticized experiment—that is, taking monkey cubs from female monkeys, he also numbered the monkeys and named them. A group of monkey cubs belong to the Stones family (such as Mill Stone, Grind Stone, Sand Stone, Moon Stone).

　　from the discovery of the name

　　Harlow knew the importance of first names. In order to avoid being mistaken for Jews by others, Harlow himself modified his surname "Israel". Steve Suomi said that in Harlow's laboratory, naming each monkey is an indispensable part of an important discovery. He was a graduate student in Harlow's laboratory and is now the director of the Department of Comparative Animal Behavior at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

　　Harlow's research team found that different monkeys have very different performance in scientific research. Some monkeys often show a lot of stress; others are much more mischievous. "We also did some experiments, hoping that these monkeys would have the same reaction, but these experiments never worked." Suomi recalled, "but according to the characteristics of each monkey, some changes are often predictable."

　　Suomi said that they are aware that these individual differences may produce genetic and epigenetic discoveries in monkeys, which are also clinically relevant for humans. "If we didn't take a personalized research route, it would be impossible to generate these insights." Now, in the research institute he leads, Suomi encourages the use of naming laboratory animals as a useful research method, and also uses it. As a symbol of individual differences in science.

　　is the same for other kinds of laboratory animals. Names will improve the lives of animals, said Brenda McCowan, a researcher at the National Primates (Non-human Primates) Research Center at the University of California, Davis, who is responsible for managing the behavioral enrichment research project of 5000 rhesus monkeys and titi . "The naming helps to establish a positive human-animal interaction, and it is conducive to improving the happiness of animals." She said.

　　Buckmaster added that the naming has been widely accepted because "people have realized the scientific value of stress-free laboratory animals... We have to make sure they are very happy laboratory animals, otherwise any information we get from them is invalid. ."

　　So, what are the differences between the behavior of animals with names and those without names? A study published in the journal "Man and Animals" in 2009 found that naming has a subtle but important impact on 516 dairy farms in the UK: 46% of the dairy farms with a name produce more milk than never The named dairy farm has a 3% higher yield, which shows that the use of the name reflects the better care environment for the cows.

　　Laboratory animals are highly sensitive to environmental factors, says Robert Sorge, a psychologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, but no one thinks that animals themselves respond to their names. At a research site at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Poolsville, Maryland, the monkey cubs have an official name the moment they live in the cage, but the animal care specialist Michelle Miller who works there admits that the monkey Never remember his name. Therefore, naming them "is for convenience," she said.

　　may cause sensory deviation

　　But there is a rhesus monkey named Teefour as an exception. This monkey is stingy and sinister. It forces female monkeys of lower status to mate and take care of themselves, and also yanks their hair. "It is considered a violent husband," said Novak, a non-human primates scientist. In her laboratory, every monkey has an official name, but Teefour does not. Its name is only the serial number of the alphanumeric tattoo branded on the chest: T-4.

　　So, does the absence of a name affect the researchers' observation of it? Another psychologist, Matthew Novak, said that there may be an impact, but it depends on the research situation. From 2002 to 2011, he worked at the NIH Poolsville resident. He believed that monkeys should not be named. If they had names, he would not want to know their names because he was worried that it might affect data collection. "The name will not change our expectations of animal behavior, but it will change the way we view animal behavior." He said.

　　But no research directly supports the above view. "As far as I know, no studies have concluded that if the research subjects are named, the research data will cause the risk of bias." said Viktor Reinhardt, a former member of the Scientific Committee of the Animal Protection Agency in Washington, DC.

　　In a specific social background, such as a prison or an army, people there will deliberately use a serial number to dehumanize them. Some people say that this is also true in medical care, where patients are referred to by date of birth, social insurance, case number or disease type.

　　In contrast: names can also humanize inanimate objects such as robots or private cars. Experts say that when cars are given certain human features, such as voice, gender, name, etc., people will think that such private cars are safer.

　　Perhaps, choosing a name can bias researchers' perception of individual animals. In this regard, Matthew Novak said that one of the obvious solutions is to name the experimental animals randomly, rather than based on their personality characteristics or appearance. "As far as possible, the name should not be associated with its implied meaning." He said, "In addition, try to train your employees not to have an emotional connection." If so, Teefour may be the most appropriate name ever.