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From: wiebe@ut-ngp.UUCP
Newsgroups: soc.women,misc.consumers,net.veg,net.pets
Subject: Re: Animal testing for Cosmetic and Household Products
Message-ID: <4327@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Nov-86 11:36:40 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.4327
Posted: Wed Nov 19 11:36:40 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 20-Nov-86 01:21:59 EST
References: <3425@sdcrdcf.UUCP> <762@ulowell.UUCP> <674@watmum.UUCP> <677@husc6.UUCP>
Distribution: world
Organization: U. Texas Center for Space Research
Lines: 33
Summary: test animals are often bred for specific characteristics
Xref: watmath soc.women:973 misc.consumers:244 net.veg:986 net.pets:2830

In article <677@husc6.UUCP>, sasaki@endor.harvard.edu (Marty Sasaki) writes:
> .... No, it is not true that test
> animals don't get bred. There are companies that breed animals, mostly
> for medical research. Mostly they breed and sell rodents and rabbits.
> Many also breed dogs and cats, pigs, and primates of various types.

I'd like to second this, with a few details:

Much animal research, in experimental psychology as well as medicine,
becomes a great deal more fruitful if the population of animals tested
is very homogeneous, so that sources of error variance are minimized.
(There's less noise in the background, so to speak, so the effect
sought is much more clear.)  Many mice and rats, in particular, are 
bred from very purified gene pools, meaning the exact characteristics 
of each animal are very very predictable:  they are far more alike than
anybody else except identical twins.  In fact, they're almost as
identical as identical twins; over the hundreds of generations,
gene variability has been almost eliminated.  This is very useful in a
lot of kinds of research.

BTW, in this process, "maze-smart" rats have been bred which,
apparently genetically, are better at running a maze than ordinary
rats! In fact, would you believe that their extra ability is not just
ordinary higher intelligence; their extra ability seems to be SPECIFIC
to just *that* maze and no other.  With other mazes, they do no better
nor worse than other rats.  (You can, with these rats, 
and theoretically probably with any living creature, breed for
any characteristic you wish to emphasize, simply by mating only those
who are high in that characteristic.)
-- 
Anne Hill Wiebe
(wiebe@ngp.cc.utexas.edu, or !ihnp4!ut-ngp!wiebe, or
!allegra!ut-ngp!wiebe)