(souce: work experience in mice/rat labs) In short: yes, sacrifice is common at experiment completion. Though it's done pragmatically and as an \ethically appr

(souce: work experience in mice/rat labs) In short: yes, sacrifice is common at experiment completion. Though it's done pragmatically and as an \ethically appropriate measure. A bit longer: most brain tissue studies require extraction, fixing, staining,... of brain. so are usually done _ex vivo_ . Even longer: But even where animal could be kept alive, it raises questions of what exactly one should do: - Do you keep paying for, up to, years to house an animal that can't be used for anything else? (consider, if you've applied treatments to it, you likely discredit it from inclusion in other studies). - Did your study cause long-term effects that would lead the animal to suffering were you to keep it alive? - You probably can't release the animal: most are raised from birth in facilities, they'd not likely survive long (not that mice live very long in the wild as it is). - Or, if you _did_ release them would they spread anything into the wild? \ ethically appropriate is decided by ethics boards. Please don't argue with me about what is or isn't ethical animal treatment.