Inktvissen
zijn uiterst intelligente dieren, met een aantal zeer opmerkelijke
eigenschappen, zo heeft de inktvis 3 harten en blauw bloed (maar inktvissen zijn heel
wat beschaafder dan wat men 'de adel' noemt, de erfgenamen van psychopaten die de bevolking middels ongebreideld geweld onder de duim hielden.....)
Lees het
volgende artikel, geschreven door Susan Bird en gepubliceerd op
Anti-Media en verbaas je over de vele eigenschappen van deze
wonderlijke zeedieren, dieren die in een aantal landen levend worden
geserveerd en waar wetenschappers hun oog op hebben laten vallen om ze te martelen in onderzoeken die prima met computermodellen kunnen
worden uitgevoerd..... Lullig dat Bird het deels nog opneemt voor
dierproeven......
Jammer
genoeg is er geen petitie aan dit artikel van het Care2 team verbonden, daar een verbod
op dierproeven met deze dieren (en alle andere dieren) van het
grootste belang is, deze dierenmishandeling op grote schaal moet eindelijk eens afgelopen zijn (zoals ook aan het eten van inktvis een eind moet worden gemaakt):
Scientists Think Octopuses Would Make Terrific Lab Rats
The octopus is
a smart, curious and mysterious being. So does it surprise you to
learn that these very qualities mean scientists are turning octopuses
into 21st century lab rats?
Yes,
it’s true. There are now thousands of octopuses and other
cephalopods living in laboratories. The Marine Biological Laboratory
in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, is at the forefront of the effort to
study all aspects of cephalopod physiology. Whether that’s a good
thing depends on your perspective.
“It’s
the only place on the planet that you can go where we are culturing a
number of these species through every life stage, through successive
generations, with the goal of creating a genetically tractable
system,” Marine Biological Laboratory’s Bret Grasse told NPR.
Scientists study
many types of animals for
different reasons. They call certain creatures “model organisms”
because their biology is often similar to ours and we already know
quite a lot about their genetic makeup. Such organisms include yeast,
fruit flies, worms, zebrafish and mice.
To
understand tissue regeneration, scientists study zebrafish and worms,
who can regrow appendages they injure or lose completely. To study
the interaction of genes with environment, they look at honeybees and
fruit flies. To study aging, the sea urchin has been a useful study
animal because it can regrow body parts through its lifetime.
Octopuses
have the largest,
most complex brain of
all invertebrate animals. That makes them of great interest to
scientists, especially those who do research on genes. Scientists can
now alter octopus genes, meaning they are breeding these creatures
and fiddling with their genetic makeup to see what effect those
changes have.
“With
these organisms, you could understand what genes did by manipulating
them,” Marine Biological Laboratory biologist Josh Rosenthal
told NPR. “And that really became an indispensable part of
biology.”
ALL ABOUT THE OCTOPUS
Octopuses
— yes, that’s the correct plural term, not “octopi” — are
eight-legged ocean dwellers who have three hearts and blue blood.
They are a type of highly advanced mollusk. Completely boneless, they
can squeeze into impossibly small spaces, making them rather
infamous escape
artists from
aquariums.
“They
are curious, inquisitive animals,” Roger Hanlon, Marine
Biological Laboratory senior scientist, told Live
Science in
2016. “They forage hundreds of meters per day looking for food and
mates and different shelters. This is an ambulatory animal, so the
idea that they would want to move outside their tank in an aquarium
is not at all surprising.”
The
octopus is a solitary wanderer. Except when mating, it explores the
world by itself. When placed together in lab aquariums, octopuses
fight one another. They therefore each need their own living space.
And speaking of containers, an octopus has no trouble unscrewing
itself from inside a jar.
Each
leg of an octopus — technically, it’s not a “tentacle” —
contains 200 or more highly sensitive suckers they use for both taste
and touch.
An
octopus has amazing defensive mechanisms. It can quickly change its
color to camouflage itself, hide among ocean waves by matching their
speed exactly, flatten itself to mimic being a fish and, when
cornered, squirt ink to create a distraction or screen from
predators.
ANIMAL WELFARE RULES ARE LACKING
Of
course, any impressive and intelligent animal eventually becomes the
focus of scientific experimentation. Now, it’s unfortunately the
octopus’s turn. That could be a problem for them, as animal welfare
rules for scientific research don’t apply to invertebrate animals —
those without a spine — except
in the European Union.
Marine
Biological Laboratory has some 3,000 cephalopods and is breeding
more all the time. For animal lovers, that’s not good news. But
it’s heartening to know that despite the lack of regulations to
protect these creatures, Marine Biological Laboratory says it’s
taking their welfare seriously.
Researchers
are working on keeping living conditions as stress-free as
possible. Marine Biological Laboratory is also putting effort
into determining what anesthesia will work best for cephalopods and
developing what they call a “one-of-a-kind policy for cephalopod
research.”
I
wish we could find other ways to research than to poke at animals.
How sad that these wonderful, intelligent creatures live their entire
lives in labs instead of free in the oceans where they belong.
That
said, I’m grateful these researchers are actively thinking about
how to make captive octopus lives better, even when legally they
aren’t required to do so. But it’s time we regulate cephalopod
research to make sure we don’t have to depend on the conscience of
those doing the experimenting.
Photo
credit: fotokon/Getty Images
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