Question: Why do scientist kill animals in different ways e.g Shot Or Suffucated. Can't that change they way they do there "Experement", and if it does can't you kill them in the same way?

David Christensen answered on 19 Nov 2013:

I agree with Aoife in that I don’t think scientists are killing animals in ways that are cruel, but I don’t think that was your question, so I will try to answer your question a bit differently. She is right though about the rules and restrictions to control the way animals are used for research, which means that the number of ways scientists will kill animals is very limited. Also, scientists are generally not horrible people! The scientists I have known that have worked with animals have hated working with animals and have hated having to kill the animals sometimes.

The way animals are killed will affect the experiments that can be done, but I don’t think this is the main thing that is thought about when using animals. As Aoife says, there are strict regulations to make sure that animals are killed humanely and the well-being of the animal is the thing that is thought of before anything else. However, the ethics of animal use for experiments says that a scientific experiment must be properly planned and must be able to give results for use of animals to be allowed. Killing animals without gain of knowledge from an experiment is clearly wrong, so the way the animals are killed might be important. As an example, experiments that are done using brains from mice will only be useful if the damage to the brain is minimised. For these experiments the way the mice are killed will always be the same to reduce suffering for the mice and to improve the results from the experiment.

I hope this answers your question toxicstorm and please be reassured that scientists are not being cruel to animals and would like to reduce the amount of work done with animals where it is possible.