> which we torture them I'm not sure to which extent this is true. From what I read (for example S. Pinker mentions this in his Better Nature..) these days all

> which we torture them I'm not sure to which extent this is true. From what I read (for example S. Pinker mentions this in his Better Nature..) these days all research on animals needs to be ok-ed by ethics committees, and the types of famous research from the past we read about wouldn't fly today. Pinker mentions explicitly his experience as an undergrad with experiments that involved rat torture and says that would never happen today. I guess people who actually work at labs would know more about this, but it appears that things have changed even for lab rats (even though we still destroy them mercilessly when they become pests to us.