This is the colony of hamsters.
These are subjects 1, 2, and 5. Subject 1 is in the far corner and subject 5 is mostly buried under paper.
This is Lily and Rosetta. Rosetta is on the box and Lily, in the corner, is the one who was eating her dead cage mate.
Then science happens
I don't know why the fuck there are pink lab coats.
A while back I decided, quite naively, that I wanted to attend graduate school. So, I thought that schools might be more likely to accept me if I graduated with departmental honors, so I set about doing all the shit you need to do to make this happen. One of these things is undertaking and completing an independent research project and so now I have to go into the lab and make these hamsters press levers for chocolate flavored pellets in order to see if they will press the lever more or less if certain variables are manipulated. Sounds sexy, enchanting and earth-shakingly important, right?
I feel for the hamsters. I mean, their entire lives, just like ours, are pretty absurd. The hamsters are born in the colony in this one room that is kept temperature regulated and, at a certain point in their development, we periodically put them into operant chambers where they learn to press levers for different reinforcers. Once trained, they go through a couple of experiments where they have to press levers in 30 minute sessions 5 days a week while we gather data, after which, the subjects are returned to their cages, and their cages placed back into the colony room. Every so often hamsters have to be euthanized, or they die, and we either submit their carcasses to other departments, or throw them out with the trash.
Ridiculous.
I feel for the hamsters. I mean, their entire lives, just like ours, are pretty absurd. The hamsters are born in the colony in this one room that is kept temperature regulated and, at a certain point in their development, we periodically put them into operant chambers where they learn to press levers for different reinforcers. Once trained, they go through a couple of experiments where they have to press levers in 30 minute sessions 5 days a week while we gather data, after which, the subjects are returned to their cages, and their cages placed back into the colony room. Every so often hamsters have to be euthanized, or they die, and we either submit their carcasses to other departments, or throw them out with the trash.
Ridiculous.
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