Photos: ‘Dinosaur’ Urges the University of Bristol to Embrace Modern Science

Photos: ‘Dinosaur’ Urges the University of Bristol to Embrace Modern Science

Bristol – Today, a PETA supporter dressed in a giant blow-up dinosaur costume in Bristol city centre to protest the university’s use of the forced swim test. The “dinosaur” carried signs reading, “University of Bristol: Stop Being Dinosaurs, Ban the Forced Swim Test” and “Animal Testing Is Prehistoric”.

In the widely discredited test, experimenters place rats, who may or may not have been dosed with a substance, into inescapable beakers of water and watch them paddle furiously trying to keep their heads above the surface. This is done on the assumption that the time it takes for the animals to stop swimming and start floating can tell us something about clinical depression in humans.

The demo is part of PETA’s campaign to urge the University of Bristol to reject this cruel experiment and embrace superior, non-animal research.

Images are also available here.

“Watching rats gasp and scramble inside glass containers is not science. This cruel and worthless test actually impedes the development of new treatments and cures,” says PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “PETA is calling on the University of Bristol to evolve out of the Stone Age by dropping the forced swim test in favour of superior, non-animal research methods.”

Following discussions with PETA entities, 15 companies and two universities, including King’s College London, have declared that they don’t intend to use the forced swim test in the future. Among the many high-profile supporters of PETA’s campaign is British icon Joanna Lumley, who sent a letter to the university’s vice-chancellor urging him to end these “ghastly” tests.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Contact:
Sascha Camilli +44 (0) 20 7923 6244; [email protected]

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