Beer Helps Comfort Snails Before Being Executed For Experimental Science

The execution of animals for experimental purposes has been a debatable topic. Though many researchers continue to advocate the fact that sometimes it is vital to euthanize animals for advancements in science, they agree that it should be done in the most compassionate way possible. Keeping this in mind, biologists have come up with a paper that suggests snails tend to endure a much less torturous death if given beer before being executed.

In many cases it has been observed that people have raised arguments regarding the slaying of animals such as chimps, lab rats and beagles for testing purposes whereas invertebrates such as snails are often ignored. The reason behind this bias is considered to be the cuteness of former animals that induces an emotional response in humans as well as the detailed studies of their nervous systems which suggest that they feel the pain.

Giving an account of their work in the Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science, the biologists disclosed the facts that when snails are drenched into highly concentrated ethanol solutions before killing them, they often exhibit signs of major distress. These signs can include secreting excess mucus, defecating, or retracting into their shells.

There are not many guidelines available on how to kill invertebrates humanely. The co-author of the study, Cody Gilbertson explained that "we wanted to see if there was a way to minimize suffering and minimize the tissue damage that occurs when you put them straight into 95 percent ethyl alcohol."

The most evident line of action was to get the snails drunk. Hence the biologists tried to intoxicate them with various alcoholic solutions in order to observe how this altered their responses to pain. When the snails were given either a Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer or a 5 percent solution of ethanol, having an alcohol content of 4.75 percent, a massive reduction in the snails' ability to feel pain was observed.

To test this, the biologists pricked and scraped the snails with needles and found that they no longer retracted into the shells when they were under the influence of beer. They also seemed to be less distressed at the probability of being executed and did not tend to withdraw into their shells while dunked into ethanol solutions.