Mice Forced to Experience Chronic Stress at Otago Uni

July 12, 2021

TODAY IS DAY 7 OF OUR BIGGEST EXPOSÉ YET

It's the 7th day of our 12 Days of Christmas University of Otago exposé!

Today, the experiment we're exposing is on mice who were subject to various cruel tests...

Young mice were forced to experience chronic stress for two weeks. They were subject to stressful situations such as having their cage shaken for 30 minutes, being hung high by their tail or being trapped in a tiny cone or in a fridge. Afterwards, they were forced to swim in the notorious Forced Swim Test to see the effect of the stress.

This study was published in 2021 — which shows that cruel experiments like this are still currently happening at the University of Otago.

Images: Examples of what the Tail Suspension Test (source) and the physical restraint tests look like (source).

THE EXPERIMENT:

Groups of mice were divided into control and stress treatment groups.
The stress groups (30 mice in total) were used in a series of stress experiments.

Stress experiments included:

Isolation: They were made to be alone all night.
Cold exposure: They were put in a fridge with a temperature of 4-6°C for 15 minutes.
Physical restraint: Their entire bodies were restrained in a small cone for 10 minutes.
Tail suspension: They were hung upside down by their tails for 8 minutes.
The Shaker Test: Their whole cage was put on a shaker for 30 minutes while they remained inside.
The Open Field Test: They were kept alone in an open arena for 10 minutes.

Some mice were forced to swim in the cruel and invalid Forced Swim Test, here they were placed in an inescapable water-filled cylinder for 5 minutes.
After testing, which lasted two weeks, animals were killed by decapitating them to take blood and organs.
Some females also had vaginal smears done to them daily to track their cycles. These animals were killed in the end with an anesthetic overdose and had their hearts flushed with a toxic substance, then their ovaries were dissected.

This was all done to try and help us understand more about the ways in which chronic stress can impact humans, a barbaric concept!

Animal testing is both cruel and unreliable — a mouse being hung upside down by their tail, does not show us how stress impacts humans.