What is animal testing?
Q: What is animal testing?
A: Animal testing, also known as animal experimentation and animal research, is the use of animals for experiments.
Q: What types of animals are commonly used for animal testing?
A: Escherichia coli, fruit flies, and mice are often used for animal testing.
Q: How many animals are used worldwide each year?
A: About 50 to 100 million vertebrate animals and many more invertebrate animals are used around the world every year.
Q: Where do these animals come from?
A: The source of the animals varies according to country and species. Most are bred specifically for this purpose, but some may be caught from the wild or bought from people who buy them from animal shelters.
Q: Where do experiments involving animals take place?
A: Animals are used for experiments inside universities, medical schools, farms, large companies and other places that provide animal-testing services.
Q: What do supporters of animal testing say about it?
A: Supporters argue that almost every medical discovery in the 20th century used animals in some way and that complex computers cannot model connections between molecules, cells, tissues, organs, organisms and the environment; therefore many important discoveries were made because of animal testing.
Q: Who opposes animal testing?
A: Scientists and organizations such as PETA oppose it on grounds that it is cruel, poorly done and costly; they also argue that animals have a right not to be used for experiments since model organisms differ from humans.
