Among many other fine qualities in animals, their understanding of compassion even surpasses humans'! They do not want others to suffer. When rhesus monkeys were forced by experimenters at Northwestern University to choose between starving and electrically shocking a helpless companion, they chose to starve!!!'
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The drive to resist compulsion is more important in wild animals than sex, food, or water. He found that captive white-footed mice spent inordinate time and energy just resisting experimental manipulation. If the experimenters turned the lights up, the mouse spent his time turning them down. If the experimenter turned the lights down, the mouse turned them up. The drive for competence or to resist compulsion is a drive to avoid helplessness.
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Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: 'Because the animals are like us.' Ask the experimenters why it is morally OK to experiment on animals, and the answer is: 'Because the animals are not like us.' Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction.
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What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their experiments lead.
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