Talk:Laboratory rat

Dissection Image
A question - this article features a color image of a rat undergoing dissection. I find the photo distasteful and nauseous-making. I understand Wikipedia doesn't censor by way of sugar coating its articles, to do so would be to lessen their encyclopedic breadth, but is the dissection necessary? Would a regular give me an idea of protocol on this? --75.68.169.29 (talk) 03:54, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I added the photo specifically because I felt that the article had been guilty of sugarcoating. It is about laboratory rats, not pet rats, but showed nothing but images of cute, living, fuzzy rats. This is not the reality, as any animal researcher can attest. Wormcast (talk) 09:12, 15 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I believe the rat dissection image violates the following Wikipedia policy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Offensive_material . There are better, less offensive ways to convey the view that animal testing is inappropriate than to stick a "shock" image in the middle of an otherwise neutral article. I recommend editing the text and linking some of the pages on animal rights issues, instead of allowing the vulgar image to remain. --140.247.205.72 (talk) 05:56, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I suppose that, out of consistency, you will next move to strip the articles on female genital cutting, leprosy, amputation, and slaughterhouse of images that you find personally 'vulgar' or disturbing. The image of a dissected rat is an entirely neutral image of what occurs to a very large percentage of lab rats. If you don't like looking at troubling images, then don't look up troubling subjects. Wormcast (talk) 11:01, 22 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't understand the logic. So a dissected rat is shown because that is what commonly happens to rats in labs?   Rats also commonly engage in reproductive behavior in labs but I don't see a picture of that in this article.  Rats are also often seen in lab spaces in mazes but there is not a picture of that in this article.  Following the argument "This happens a lot and therefore it should be shown" would result in overwhelming amount of photos.  Obviously we can't do that.  So only exceptionally pertinent and informative photos should be selected from all the possible options.  This is a common occurrence on wikipedia.  For example, PETA killed a lot of cats but I don't see a picture of a dead cat on their page.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.79.176.228 (talk) 23:25, 26 September 2011 (UTC)


 * @anon: neither this article nor that image are meant to convey any opinion on the "appropriateness" of animal testing. --&#65279;ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 23:56, 31 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I find that hard to believe, given that this article involves somewhat controversial content that hardly relates to dissection. It is likely to provoke a negative reaction in people who have not been exposed to dissections. As opposed to the cases of leprosy or amputation, this image is hardly a definitive or necessary component of understanding uses of lab rats. Dissections are not performed on all (or in some labs, any) rats, nor are they performed or witnessed by all lab technicians, not to mention the general public. While care should be taken not to sugar-coat the topic - it is a necessary evil that rats end up being dissected - they are not gorily eviscerated, as this image implies. The message of this image - that many rats must be dissected in order to be examined - would be just as effectively communicated in written words and would not be as shocking or offensive. By the logic here, we ought to plaster photographs of aborted fetuses on the pregnancy page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.66.76.1 (talk) 05:25, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Every year, tens of millions of lab rats are dissected, both for scientific/medical research and for educational purposes. Particularly in education, dissection is one of the primary uses of lab rats - therefore an image of dissection is clearly relevant to the topic. You may be interested to learn that the image in question did not come from some macabre animal-welfare website, but was posted by a student taking an introductory college biology lab. It is (imho) no more or less gory than any other dissection, and is an entirely routine sight. It is simply disingenuous (and yes, a form of sugarcoating) to censor out a major use of lab rats because some people find images of the truth unpalatable. Is dissection the only use of lab rats? Of course not, and in fact the article includes another image of a rat being used for scientific research. I actually spent some time looking for a public domain photo of a rat navigating a maze (another classic use) but could not locate one. Perhaps one of you can... Wormcast (talk) 23:37, 3 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Finally found this! -Wormcast (talk) 08:09, 14 November 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm calling politics on this. We can notate that lab rats are frequently dissected, and place the image on dissection.  The tone you take here suggests a moral mission to raise awareness of the terrible consequences of research for lab rats; this is not the purpose of Wikipedia and is not NPOV.  Further, lab rats are popular pets, and many short-term laboratory studies have neither use for sacrificing the animal model nor suitable further purpose for an already-studied animal; many such animals are taken as rescue pets by the general public.  This discussion has made it clear that the image was added for shock-value, specifically to create an emotional upset and draw attention to a particular concern of the editor's. --John Moser (talk) 18:35, 22 October 2016 (UTC)


 * You are free to read whatever you want into this discussion - but you are not free to purge educational and relevant images from articles because you find them upsetting. That would be a violation of policy. Now if you were to produce evidence that adoption is a primary use of lab rats while dissection is exceedingly rare, it would be a different story. Start looking! ~-Wormcast (talk) 07:26, 14 November 2016 (UTC)


 * If the image photo is included then we should be careful which pages redirect to this article. For example Wistar rat. Not all people looking for information on Wistar Rats are looking for information on Lab Rats in general, not to mention an image of a dissected one. --Dmfallak (talk) 20:19, 20 August 2011 (UTC)


 * I've seen discussions like this on several other medically-relavent pages (Human penis and trypophobia come to mind), and there is always a person (or persons) who is screaming (or at least vociferously stating) the accusation of "CENSORSHIP!!" (SCREAMING CAPS and nonstandard-punctuation intended). Mind you, I haven't read through this long tome of a section, so perhaps this discussion has avoided that fate - but I doubt it. It strikes me that a reasonable compromise would be to use the Template:Hidden Hidden template?  Perhaps with some "more tasteful" (I'll leave arguments over what that might be to others) line-drawing of said dissection could added as well as a "non-hidden" image.


 * Of course, I also remember from grade-school social studies that such compromise was also considered a useful feature of politics by the U.S. founding fathers. We only have to witness recent U.S. government shutdowns, filibusters, (to some perhaps) the entire Obama presidency, and other fiascos, to see how that hope turned out) Jimw338 (talk) 19:24, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Useful pdf
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v428/n6982/pdf/nature02426.pdf -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 21:36, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Possible topics on Lab rats in entertainment
-ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 21:54, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
 * William Kotzwinkle's Doctor Rat (at least on book on ethics discusses it nontrivially: On the Integration of Nature: Post 9-11 Biopolitical Notes by Richard Grossinger. Plus it won the World Fantasy Award)
 * The Abyss (somewhat iffy)

Proposals on Hairless Rat section
After discussion with the ever patient ΖαππερΝαππερ, first at Talk:Fancy rat (Under review of new sources) and then at my talk page, I would like to propose the following:

1. Move info from Lee's Article to Pet Rats. Although she goes over some lab strains, it is to support her opinion about the ethics of breeding and showing hairless rats, which is a pet topic. Include Gangi's as a possible opposing POV, unless a better non-self-published article is available.

2. A general overview of hairless rat lab lines, and what they are maintained for, written on the lab rat page, but based on science journal articles, not on Lee's article. There are many references in Lee and Gangi's articles, some of which appear to be reviews of common lab lines, that we can use.

I wouldn't mind digging up some articles through Inter-Library Loan (if they are not available online), but I would need to know how to share with other contributors the info from copyrighted scanned/faxed articles once I get them (Obviously a newbie here!) --75.3.0.156 (talk) 04:14, 23 January 2009 (UTC)


 * as funny as it sounds, generally there is no requirement from wikipedia's policies or guidelines that users MUST prove something true to other editors by making non-web accessible material available to them. ILL is available for everyone and if you could get the info, so can i.  that being said, commonsense would say that with controversial or contentious material, it may be helpful to find some way to help your fellow editor out.  but i am not going to fight someone to that extreme on something like pet breeding :D  I like to assume good faith that editors aren't gonna lie to me.  I think, until better refs are forthcoming, we should keep the section neutral by leaving info on malocclusion out and rewriting it more generally as the current ref may be non-neutral. -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 04:49, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Inbred vs outbred
This article states that Wistar, Long-Evans, and Sprague-Dawley are outbred stocks. It also states that outbred stocks are "the opposite" of inbred strains.

The Inbred strain article says inbred strains consist of individuals who are 98% genetically identical, created through 20 generations of brother-sister breeding, and the Wistar, Sprague-Dawley, and Long-Evans rats are listed as inbred strains.

Can an expert clear up the inconsistancy between these two articles? --SV Resolution(Talk) 14:23, 27 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Ah, well both. Wistar is outbred (as is Wistar Han, Wistar unilever...), but Wistar Furth, Wistar Kyoto etc are inbred.


 * I wouldn't call outbred stocks "opposite" because they are both maintained in closed colonies; selection of the breeding pairs is just different. In inbred, you breed siblings usually to produce animals as genetically identical as possible; and the entire population can trace back to one original breeding pair.  in outbred you rotate selection so as to preserve as much genetic variation as possible, and each retired animal is replaced with one of its children of same sex so that no one dam/sire becomes over-represented in the population's genetics.  (outbreeding methods have more in common with breeding endangered species- you have a small population and can't bring in new blood, so you do your best not to allow the population's genetics to bottleneck any further.)


 * I'll make a clarification on the inbred strain list


 * does that help? --6th Happiness (talk) 18:28, 27 March 2009 (UTC)


 * You improved inbred strain, but it is still confusing. Your explanation here seems good to me (a non-expert) --SV Resolution(Talk) 15:35, 1 April 2009 (UTC)


 * : : I think it's still confusing: it still says that all those strains are outbred, while in practice virtually all of the members of those strains that you will encounter will be inbred (at least, in my experience, I do not know the numbers though). Semantically it might be correct to say that the term 'Wistar' does not refer to an inbred strain, but since in practice a lot of them will be inbred, the statement does not actually give the reader the information which it appears to give; in fact, the way it is stated now indicates that there are no inbred Wistars, which is not true. As you yourself indicate in your previous comment, some Wistars aren't outbred, but the text does not describe that situation at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 145.18.213.196 (talk) 10:59, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

"Hairless rat" picture is not a rat
The picture of hairless rats is actually a picture of hairless mice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Isthisfunforyou (talk • contribs) 15:59, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

lewis rats could be mentioned as well
http://www.informatics.jax.org/external/festing/rat/docs/LEW.shtml

as it has comparable numbers as other strains listed using http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed

as a lazy measure of its popularity, where "{name} {yield}" is derived from a search of "{name} rat": zucker 776, sprague-dawley 2409, lewis 1305, long-evans 276, wistar 3025, biobreeding 31;

of course, i'm too lazy to write about them right now. 24.52.143.225 (talk) 19:52, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Sprague-Dawley tumor tendency
Does anyone else think it might be appropriate for the section on Sprague-Dawley rats to include some discussion of their natural tendency to develop tumors at around 24 months of age? Here's an article for anyone unfamiliar with the concept, but you will have to remove the spaces from the URL -- apparently examiner-dot-com is blacklisted: http: //www. examiner .com /article/seralini-claims-rat-chow-and-gmos-led-to-tumors I'm not commenting either way -- I'm just wondering if the concept should be included. Adv4Ag (talk) 22:30, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20081017070234/http://www.wistar.org/about_wistar/history.html to http://www.wistar.org/about_wistar/history.html
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 * Added tag to http://www.books.google.com/books?isbn=0080454321
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080620075042/http://www.criver.com/research_models_and_services/research_models/Long_Evans.html to http://www.criver.com/research_models_and_services/research_models/Long_Evans.html
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Call for Revisions on Weird Phrasing and Incomplete Sentences
I stumbled on this article and noticed a couple of things that is very confusing to the reader. (1) In "Use in research". we see a sentence that is cut-off in the middle (paragraph 4): Inbred strains are also available but are not as commonly used as inbred mice (2) Also in "Use in research", we see a sentence that is phrased in a rather odd way, I have no idea what this means (Last sentence): During food rationing due to World War II, British biologists ate laboratory rat, creamed — Preceding unsigned comment added by Acolaos (talk • contribs) 04:36, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Ideas for Research section
Planning to make revisions to some of the sentences to make the paragraph more coherent:
 * add in the first sentence of the paragraph: "Scientists have bred many strains or "lines" of rats specifically for experimentation...due to their measurable intelligence which has been found to be similar to humans, rats have aided the understanding of different cognitive factors which make rats a good model organism"
 * Plans to add in 3rd or 4th paragraph: "In addition, laboratory and wild rats have both intended in the studies, they have noticed that there have been changes in the morphological and physiological changes. Although they are both the same organisms, it has been discovered that they differ in counterparts and behavior during the course of inbreeding. This results in an impact in research relating to the Morris water navigation task when under a stressful environment" This talks about the interbreeding between laboratory and wild rats that impacts in research studies Azyla.m (talk) 17:08, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Addition to Research Section

 * I want to add a section on the study of thermoregulation of the tail. It has been used in alot of research. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jazzmk2000 (talk • contribs) 21:11, 15 May 2022 (UTC)