Why do scientists often use mice to do experiments?

In the scientific community, rodents are the most popular test subjects. Up to 95% of animal studies in the United States are done on rodents. In Europe, rodents account for 79% of all animal experiments in studies.

Interestingly, we cannot say for sure how many mice were used in research and experiments. While the US Department of Agriculture tracks many experimental animals - such as birds, dogs, cats, rabbits and even guinea pigs - no one in the US has a general list of all the rats used in research. assist. Since 1965, the number of mouse-related scientific citations has quadrupled, while most other subjects such as dogs, cats, guinea pigs and rabbits used in the study have not increased.

Why are mice so much used in the laboratory? There are quite a few practical reasons: they are small, they are easy to breed and they are cheap. When you experiment with multiple objects - and research can be more reliable when experiments are conducted on multiple generations of objects, not just one generation of objects - it's hard to have any object that wins the mouse. . After that, mice are mammals, so they are members of a family anyway.

However, one thing is not to forget that mice are not primates. While primates have a very close connection with humans in terms of genetics (99% can say the same), the use of primates in research is still controversial. In addition, it should be said that mouse genes are very easy to change.

And consider this: science is also an industry built and developed based on past works. As we said, the use of laboratory mice is extremely common and exponentially increases; This growth may be the cause of rat popularity in the experiment. If a scientist chooses to use a certain animal in the experiment, that animal will often be chosen when conducting similar or related experiments or studies.

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