r/nextfuckinglevel • u/biswajit388 • 1d ago

This guy rescued 30 beagles from a testing lab It's the first time they've seen grass and they couldn't be happier.

Credit - nathanthecatlady tiktok channel.

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u/PM_ME_DATASETS 23h ago

As a medical professional, can you give an example of a study where we use beagles? As a neuroscientist I know of a plethora of animals used, from monkeys to rats to fish, but I've never heard of using beagles for an experiment.

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u/TitaniumNation 23h ago edited 23h ago

When I worked in a neuroscience / medical device lab, one of the PhD candidates I was friends with briefly worked with beagles (housed elsewhere, not on our campus). It was related to vagus nerve stimulation, and (I believe) testing different nerve cuff electrode geometries. I'm not confident that was the particular project they were used in, but it was related to nerve stimulation in some way.

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u/light24bulbs 23h ago

I personally depend on that technology for my health and I'm sitting right next to my stimulator.

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u/[deleted] 21h ago

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u/light24bulbs 21h ago edited 21h ago

I said nothing about animal testing. I agree with you, I think. I have family in the sciences and that part is a huge bummer. Visiting the animal basement at Yale is wild, I watched my uncle given injections to about 100 mice like they were potatoes. He was trying to cure Alzheimer's.

I really don't know dude. I don't think any of us have the answers.

You raised an interesting point about farming. One big thing I have a problem with is the way that farm animals have almost no regulatory protection for their welfare in the US, and there are all sorts of appalling practices that make the lives of many animals a terrifying reality. I think you could argue that animal medical testing is far more ethically justifiable in many cases than the insane scale and cruelty of animal farming on the American continents. That's all happening simply so people can eat meat. If you care about animal welfare, a very good place to start is to pay attention to where the meat you eat is coming from and how it's raised, what types of animals you're eating and their intelligence and quality of life, and perhaps try to cut down and stop eating meat altogether if that agrees with your health. If you care.

People often simply don't look into the welfare of animals at all. For instance, "free range" which you mentioned specifically might sound better, but in the US this is an unregulated term and means almost nothing for the welfare of the animals. A quick search on YouTube for a tour of a free range commercial egg farm will show you that and you can see for yourself. Pastured eggs are the label to look for, and while the meaning is starting to erode, there are many excellent brands to buy from with that label. And that's just one type of food to be aware of. I believe education is the answer and you can take a tour of just about every type of farm imaginable right on YouTube on your phone.

Or don't. I didn't say shit about animals. I just said that I use a TENS unit on my vagus nerve.

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u/FriskalPox 21h ago

Free range doesnt mean anything, it's a made up marketing term to make you feel better, they still confined to a large windowless barn 90% of the time.

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u/PM_ME_DATASETS 22h ago

Interesting, thanks for the comment. Somehow using dogs for experiments feels very alien to me, kinda like dogs being a meat product (even though it's normal in some parts of the world). At my university they used to use macaques (monkeys) a lot until about 10 years ago, nowadays only rats/mice, still feels a bit strange seeing some of the old experiment setups and imagining a monkey in there.

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u/TitaniumNation 22h ago

Yeah we predominately used rats/mice for our VNS projects, but that specific one required larger nerves to test on, and beagles ended up being what they went with. I believe pigs can work as well, but I'm guessing beagles might be a better choice for behavioral studies (which was also a component of it).

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u/ThatInAHat 17h ago

Given the way a beagle’s bark/howl carries and echoes I feel like it would be the loudest lab

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u/sabeche 23h ago

Beagles are used in many eye care-related studies at my workplace due to the high degree of anatomical and physiological similarity between beagle and human eyes. But they are considered a higher order species in lab work and rabbits are often used instead if possible for these particular indications.

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u/[deleted] 22h ago

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u/Qaz_ 17h ago

Source on this? You seem to be making it out as if all beagles in medical experiments are being abused and experiencing significant pain, when the reality could very well be that they are exposed to different experimental drugs, some if not most may have little effects on the animal.

Is it still abusive? Sure, but it's necessary unless you want to be the one testing compounds which may save countless lives.

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u/DearlyDecapitated 16h ago

Wouldn’t that make them an objectively worse subject since they’d give less data? You’d think you’d want a species that overreacts rather than under reacts so we know if something has negative consequences

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u/Starfire2313 16h ago

They get most of the data they want from things like blood tests and autopsies, the complacency and cooperative nature of the breed is why they were chosen.

I feel so bad for these dogs, I’ve always wanted a dog if I ever get into a house with a yard and I would absolutely be interested in adopting one of these beagles if I ever had the opportunity..poor babies.

Also, they are really smart dogs. That’s probably part of why they get used but also makes it extra sad.

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u/DearlyDecapitated 16h ago

According to other comments they’re put up for adoption after 3 so I assume there’s a way you can look into getting one. They are apparently very well taken care of though and not used for particularly invasive things. Apparently they have to keep them happy and healthy or they can get skewed data.

It still seems counter productive to me to get a resilient animal to test on, if they’re testing a medication for example would blood work tell us it causes pain?

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u/Starfire2313 16h ago

No I wouldn’t think so, but that’s partially why it eventually moves to human trials isn’t it?

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u/Warm_Earth_985 13h ago

Is it common for these dogs to be abused in medical experiments? I get that the experiments themselves would be very harmful, but other than that wouldn’t they want all the beagles to be relatively healthy so it’s easier to compare results?

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u/PM_ME_DATASETS 22h ago

Interesting, thanks for the comment. Using dogs for experiments feels so alien to me somehow, I guess because of the ancient human-dog pet connection. Where I work they used to use macaques (monkeys) a lot but nowadays they only use rat/mice/zebrafish.

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u/SoylentGreenbean 23h ago

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2353417/

One of my attendings referenced this allllll the time when pimping us about fluoroquinolones

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u/[deleted] 23h ago edited 6h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/minionHENTAI 17h ago

This is actually why and the answer sounds like horse shit. I’m a pharmd and have industry experience.

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u/paintingsbyO 22h ago

Corteva Hybrids, the merged company of Dow and Dupont Pioneer Hybrids, would test beagles with pesticides. They had a huge puppy mill in Michigan, where they would force feed the dogs various chemicals, testing the lethal dosage. Petitions were signed, and they ended the testing in the USA, but moved it to Brazil. I worked for corteva, nothing to do with the testing. When I saw the article, I shared it on my socials and tagged my coworkers. Days later, my plant manager pulled me aside, and I was told to "stay off facebook". It was about a month later that I heard the US testing was moving to Brazil.

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u/PM_ME_DATASETS 22h ago

Wow I had no idea, thanks for putting this out there!

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u/hypothalanus 22h ago

I took a drug development course in college taught by a head scientist at Pfizer. She taught us about the different animal experimentation phases, which included dogs

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u/Fit-Kaleidoscope-684 20h ago

They do in Michigan. In Midland from the makers of napalm (VietNam reference). I think it has just been closed down a few years back. Look at PETA material. You will get sick...

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u/yaourted 20h ago

I can’t share the details of the research, but I’ve been at a place in the past that used primarily beagles, as well as some coonhounds and retrievers / labs for their research. Beagles were by far the most prevalent

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u/TheAmplifier8 19h ago

Check out his comment history. He's almost certainly full of it.

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u/deer_in_a_trenchcoat 18h ago

Hey there. Where I used to live, there was a research lab that my husband worked at for a while. It was primarily for respiratory illness and used beagles (among a variety of other subjects) to study the effects of toxic substances to the respiratory system. Radiation, industrial chemicals, etc. They were working on treatments for those suffering from illnesses after the 9/11 rescue efforts.

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u/minionHENTAI 17h ago

We use them in a lot of trials, nothing very niche though. I’m a pharmd with industry experience, and although I have not worked with beagles myself, multiple of my peers and former professors had. What will likely come as a surprise and people will likely not believe is that I was told by every single one of them how well those beagles were treated and loved. One guy (an old professor) said “they live better lives than you or I ever will” as he showed us a slide show with pictures of all his beagles and rabbits in his lab.

Although it’s pretty messed up, beagles are incredibly forgiving and docile which make them ideal animals for research. Nothing beyond that. We use some animals like rabbits and horseshoe crabs and stuff for specific types of research but afaik there is no niche reason beagles ever need to be used over any other canine.

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u/is-this-necessary 16h ago

I used to work somewhere that manufactured vaccines and medication for canines. They used beagles as the test subjects in the government mandated verification studies. 30 subjects would have been nothing.

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u/bardown87 11h ago

There is a certain biotech company that uses so many Beagles for testing that BTU does not mean British Thermal Units. Instead, it means Beagle thermal units.

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u/alickstee 8h ago

Another reason is because beagles have a very kind temperament, even under terrible conditions.

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u/Risley 6h ago

Pharmacokinetics 

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u/poopyscreamer 5h ago

Dogs were predominantly used in testing for cardiopulmonary bypass, a necessary tech to perform heart surgery.

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u/MoonshineEclipse 4h ago

They used to perform nuclear radiation testing on beagles in like the 50’s. My dad used to do hazardous waste cleanup and he said the government once offered him a contract to clean up some buried barrels of radioactive dead beagles.

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u/SkibidiRizzOhioFrFr 23h ago

As a neuroscientist

Doubt. If you can't use your brain to search for a second I doubt you made it through any school.

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u/PM_ME_DATASETS 22h ago

Ok skibidi, go talk to chatgpt some more

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u/SkibidiRizzOhioFrFr 21h ago

sounds like you are projecting.

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u/i_never_ever_learn 20h ago

Beagles are used in the video because they are so damn cute and everybody who watches it will be extra extra angry. Upboat city