New York Vermin

Two interesting stories. First Via Alan Rats flee the floods!

We were talking about it on last night’s squirrel report I suspect the report is fairly accurate. While rats can be considered semi-aquatic with their good swimming ability and affinity to water a storm surge flood of ocean water probably killed a bunch of them, and the ones that survived will THRIVE in the destruction that is New York City. What they got wrong was that rats can get WAY bigger than a pound if given ample food. We have rats in the lab that are north of two pounds and there is NOTHING special about them, they can get that big in the wild if allowed to!

But not all vermin are bad, and Sandy harmed them too!

Among the smaller but still important casualties of Hurricane Sandy were thousands of laboratory rodents, genetically altered for use in the study of heart disease, cancer and mental disorders like autism and schizophrenia, that drowned in basement rooms at a New York University research center in Kips Bay.

The collection of carefully bred rodents was considered one of the largest and most valuable of its kind in the country. The animals lived in colonies in the cellar of the Smilow Research Center, on 1st Avenue near 30th Street.

New York University medical and research staff worked furiously to protect their human patients — and others threatened by the storm — in all three of its facilities in Kips Bay. Though most of the animals at the center were unharmed, the center staff could not rescue the animals in one of the facilities, despite hours of work amid the flooding that started at the institute on Monday night….Lines of genetically altered animals, like brain banks, are painstakingly built up over time. But the mouse colonies can be restored, researchers said; many of the rodents lost in the storm have genetic relatives living elsewhere, and those animals could be used to begin the process.

Sounds like from this story they have embryos frozen in archives that can be put into foster mothers to re-derive the transgenic animals. Still depending on the size of the colonies lost this could set research back months or years.

Crazy! And of course many places put their animal facilities in basements because its easier to control light levels, but also to hide them from animal rights activists who’d rather we live in the dark ages of medicine rather than potentially cause pain to rats, mice, dogs or monkeys. Many places that keep research animals keep their colony location a strict secret just to prevent political action against them.

h/t Mrs. Weer’d

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4 Responses to New York Vermin

  1. Kristopher says:

    Portland State University had to hide the Biology lab on it’s campus.

    It’s on the top floor of a building, has no signs or directory information pointing it out, and only the keyed service elevator has a button that goes to that floor.

    • Weerd Beard says:

      Been through a few of those. Been through a few where all the animals are delivered to a side dock that leads into a windowless facility. LOTS of top floor facilities behind security access.

      You really need to know what your looking for to find one.

      Heck I got my start in the animal research world talking with a friend who runs the facility for a fairly large company. It has lots of employees, and probably 90-99% of them have NO idea animal research is conducted on-site.

      The eco-terroists are so nasty nobody wants a target on their back!

  2. BobG says:

    All the flood is doing is skimming the gene pool; the ones left will be the ones who were bigger, stronger, and smarter than the others.

    Sort of like coyotes out in my area; we shot the slow ones, and poisoned the dumb ones, so what do we have left?

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