• Question: What animal do you tnink is the easiest to study?

    Asked by Guti7713 to Carrie, Cedric, Ellen, Ines, Rupert on 9 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Ellen Williams

      Ellen Williams answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      I don’t think any animal is easy to study – they all have their pros and cons – it is just about finding the animal and the project that is right for you

    • Photo: Rupert Marshall

      Rupert Marshall answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      It depends what scientific question you are trying to answer. Scientists choose the best animal for their question. So if I am interested in social behaviour I choose a social species, one that lives in groups. If i am interested in animal communication I choose a type of communication that is best for my question – like bird song. It helps if the animal is easy to find and see too

    • Photo: Carrie Ijichi

      Carrie Ijichi answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      Invertebrates because you can keep them in a tank on a laboratory and they don’t seem to mind that. That lets you run really interesting studies and experiments close to your office. For quite a lot of research, you need lots of licences before you’re allowed to start and these can be hard to get. You don’t need those of most invertebrates so you can get going quickly. The only thing is those licences are really important for protecting animal welfare, so maybe invertebrates should have them too?

      You really can’t keep horses in a tank in the lab! ;(

    • Photo: Ines Goncalves

      Ines Goncalves answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      It really depends on the questions you want to ask. Mice and zebrafish are popular animals of genetics and biomedical studies. Birds are common choices in studies of sexual selection and mate choice. Generally speaking, diurnal animals that can be easily habituated to human presence are popular choices because they are convenient for us to study, BUT they need to present the behaviours or traits that you are interested in studying of course.

    • Photo: Cedric Tan

      Cedric Tan answered on 12 Mar 2017:

      Ah all animals have their problems. I’d say the fruit fly as they are well studied and therefore there are so many tools that can make the study easy. For example we know the entire gene sequence and we could edit these genes and see how their behaviour changes.

      Further they reproduce lots, are easier to handle and breed in the lab and can be seen by the naked eye.

Comments