– why are tests/studies often done on rats specifically?
In: Biology
They’re easy to breed, cheap to maintain and somewhat genetically similar to humans. Most of the decisions to use them boil down to cost. Scientists don’t normally have a huge budget and something like lab chimps would be expensive and morally dubious at best.
Mice are actually more common than rats, but rodents in general are the most popular animals for scientific study. We use rodents because they’re easy to get, don’t cost much to get or keep alive, are easy to care for, are small and easy to handle, and reproduce quickly. We generally use rats as opposed to mice for behavior research because rats are more social and have superior memory and problem solving skills, which makes them more similar to humans than mice.
Mice are easy to reliably mass produce along the same genetic line so the results can be repeated. They are cheap to feed and can be replaced cheaply.
From touring the clean up and decon areas of a *single* rat lab, that individual lab goes through ~36,000 mice a year. There are a lot of rat labs out there.
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