Animal Ethos. Lesley A. Sharp

of staff enrichment” (playing on the importance of enrichment for lab-based animals as a welfare practice), and “all sorts of people go in there just so they can frolic with the cats.”

      Dogs, however, define a special category of favored species, overwhelmingly dominating the answers I have received about species preference. Indeed, dogs were mentioned so frequently that I soon learned to anticipate this as an answer from interviewees. Researchers often express an aversion for using cats—or “the other domesticated species,” as one animal technician put it—when speaking comparatively of dogs, either because they have heard cats are uncooperative and temperamental or, more often, because they fear the “backlash” of public outrage, but not because they themselves are fond of felines. A reluctance to work with canine subjects, however, stems not from experiences with pet ownership that occurred in childhood, but those that occurred later in life and, overwhelmingly, once one has established a research career. For instance, during a public talk on the ethical treatment of lab animals, a neuroscientist who works with macaques included a PowerPoint slide that featured his (unnamed) four-year-old twins on a swing set while his two dogs, who we learned were named Astro and Marmaduke, frolicked nearby. As he explained, whereas his work on the visual cortex has meant working with various species for three full decades, “I could never have dogs in my lab because I love these two mutts as much as my own children.” Yet another primate researcher who has a pet Belgian shepherd explained during an interview that he could “never work with dogs because it’s too close to home.”