Lab Animals have to be looked after 24 hours a day, every day of the year (including weekends and at Christmas).
8 out of 10 of the animals we use in UK laboratories are rats and mice. We also use guinea pigs, rabbits, ferrets, fish, birds, reptiles, dogs, cats, sheep, cows, horses, toads and small monkeys called marmosets and macaques.

Which animals do you think it might be hardest to look after?

You have to be an animal technologist to be allowed to look after lab animals.
Animal technologists are trained and take exams to prove they know how to care for lab animals properly.

Lab animals eat special food and their condition and cages are regularly monitored. So to be an animal technologist you have to like animals a lot.

Who else apart from animal technologists has to work at Christmas?

In the UK there is always a Vet available to treat lab animals if they are ill. Animal technologists play with the animals and provide special toys to keep them happy (rats like to chew things, mice like dark tunnels).

Do you play with your pets every day?

In the Uk, lab animals are used to discover, develop and test new medicines and treatments such as surgery and for safety testing. Using animals to test cosmetics is not done in the UK.
New medicines are given to animals in their food or water or by tablets into their mouths.
Sometimes that have injections or inhale the medicine in a special cage (like a giant asthma inhaler). After testing in animals a new medicine is always tested in human volunteers.

Would you volunteer to take a new medicine?

The poo, wee and blood of lab animals are tested. Microscopes, scanners and computers are used to find out how animals are affected by disease and new medicines. Animal technologists help calm and soothe the animals and if anything might hurt the animal it is given pain relief. When the research is complete, most lab animals are humanely killed (with the same care as your vet will end the life of a sick or old pet). The animals are normally killed so their internal organs can be examined. This helps us to understand fully how a living body reacts to illnesses and new medicines.

Has one of your pets ever been put to sleep?
What did your vet do to help it die peacefully

Most lab animals are used to help find new medical treatments. About 4% are use in safety testing on non-medical products such as the chemicals we use in our homes or on farms.
This work is done to ensure these chemicals will not make us or our animals ill.

Can you think of any chemicals used in your home or school and why they need to be safe?