50 to 100 million, that’s the Number of vertebrate animals that scientists worldwide use for experimental reasons annually. An even larger number of invertebrates are used for scientific research, but these experiments on the whole are unregulated by the law and not calculated in annual statistics.

These ‘laboratory animals’ are mostly bred in research labs, and even fewer numbers are caught from the wild or are obtained from pounds. Mice, monkeys, dogs, sheep, fruit flies, birds are some of the common animals used for research purposes. Many animals have been instrumental in helping scientists win Nobel accolades as well. For instance, penicillin was tested on mice, organ transplants were experimented using dogs, etc.

While the subject of animal research is rather controversial to say the least; but scientific and medical research development is quite unimaginable without experiments being conducted on animals, birds, insects and fish.

Some of the common fields of animal research include experiments conducted for cosmetic, drug, toxicology, xenotransplantation, mutagenesis, developmental biology, evolutionary studies and pharmaceutical testing.

The National Institute of Science Media [NISM] is a leading publisher of study resources on the various branches of science. Joel Ball, lead author of the many study resources and career mentoring programs published under the NISM name is an established author in scientific and publishing circles.