Does anyone else support animal research?

[Petersko]

Can you people please stop debating that obscure hard to define, basically baseless concept called conciousness!

That which is clear and easily defined hardly requires debate.

This forum is called "thought and awareness", not "unambiguous facts".

 

[justsomeguy]

i agree that "consciousness" is probably a fruitless topic of conversation.

its an imaginary focal point, like "the good life" or "the truth."

::shrugs::

 

[WAS]

i dont support it i love animals too much. except for monkeys. so do ur crap on monkeys and babies, but leave the cute ones alone.

 

[MynameisnotDeja]

^ WTF?!!!

That is so wrong..especially since monkeys (well..chimps, which are often tested on) are one of our closest relatives...and very intelligent.

8(

 

[nads]

Good call Cimora,

From WordNet, Princeton Uni:

consciousness

n 1: an alert cognitive state in which you are aware of yourself and your situation; "he lost consciousness" [ant: unconsciousness] 2: having knowledge of; "he had no awareness of his mistakes"; "his sudden consciousness of the problem he faced"; "their intelligence and general knowingness was impressive" [syn: awareness, cognizance, knowingness]

Now, nobody can tell if any other being is truly conscious as described by the 1st defn. above so we look for evidence and draw reasonable conclusions from what scientific knowledge we have. Solipsists would rather spout Descartes all day than do this so deny the existance of all other consciousness.

We know that we are actively conscious when making decisions. We have a number of courses to decide from and spend time receiving information, validating it, and acting out a response. We also know other 'higher' mammals do this thanks to the tens of thousands of hours spent by behaviourists simply watching and recording responses to various stimuli. When an animal behaves predictably all of the time in response to a controlled stimuli, it is thought to have no conscious reaction to that particular stimuli. If the animal shows no conscious reactions to any stimuli, it is thought to be a non-conscious animal.

I read about an interesting experiment with fish a while ago that showed how the females of this one species of fish will ignore all fish-shaped objects swimming past its nest but a fish-shaped object with a certain coloured mark that corresponded to the male of the species made the fish attack. The males of the species were known to eat the young. Then the experimenters used other shapes - squares, circles, octopus, snake etc. - all with the mark and the fish attacked everytime. This was then considered a non-conscious action, an instinct.

But if you look at the process of decision-making, you'll see that all it is is a more complex reaction than the simple 'fish attacks the coloured spot' response. There is more information present thanks to our arsenal of sense organs and our memory & representative language system, so the process takes longer. Some schools of thought conclude from this that consciousness is then just a delayed reaction and if studied, and controlled properly, conscious animals would behave predictably too. But, memory is pretty much impossible to control so thats as far as it goes really.

After deconstructing the whole idea (I'll spare the details), I've come to the conclusion that the above theory is hinged on the absence of a 'soul' - an original, individual entity that resides within each of our bodies that is not influenced at all by the environment we live in but rather influences the environment in a one-way fashion. The existance of this 'soul' to me is a pipedream, a fabricated logical fortress designed to withstand debunking due to its untestable nature, but in the process, not ensuring its own validity. A paradox.

So then we have two options:
1. No soul, no free will, no 'special' consciousness. We just react predictably to everything and call it consciousness.

2. Soul exists and is the source of consciousness making it special in that it is original and has will.

If 2 is the case, and the soul is unidentifiable, then we can only guess as to what has one and what does not. Guesses made based on criteria such as having a CNS, simply being a lifeform, behaving like a human, communicating the idea through language, etc. all compound uncertainty upon uncertainty.

So while the question of whether we have a soul or not is a 50/50 proposition, the question of whether or not any particular organism has a soul-derived, and therefore 'special', consciousness is less likely than that organism having no soul and therefore no 'special' consciousness. It is this inequality I base my view on. The only way to have the options equal is to say the whole universe has a soul which then devalues the distinction and is the basis for Panentheism.

 

[Cimora]

Kewl some1 on the same page as me!

I too think its logically safer to assume _true_ conciousness, or in your words a soul might more likely exist in anything, or eveything rather than in one place where it cant really be tested - (often in the person claiming it no less!)

(Although i tend to think of "true conciousness" more as simply, being aware of, and , being able to intervene in control of, all internal mental processes. Which is similar -ish to your one-way street idea)

The question fo soul is of course fairly relevant because many people in pop psychology actually refer to a concept more like a soul than anything in science about the mind.

 

[vegan]

Of course that math only works if you value the life of the animal at zero. Otherwise you would not begrudge it the energy needed to keep it alive, which is where that lost food value goes.

no
because the animals bred, killed and eaten are also created with that goal.
the millions of cows that live in warehouses didn't breed and come to life "naturally".
they were created by man (artificial insemination).

which means that instead of eating a relatively small amount of vegetables, man decides to create animals that didn't exist, make them suffer, feed them huge amounts of plants, and kill them to eat a small amount of meat (compared to what could have fed the plants eaten instead)
where does all the south-american corn production go? to the north-american created cows.

They respond to extremely simple stimuli. Movement of the right type corresponds to "food", and triggers a simple hunt program. Other stimuli trigger either no action, or a flight response.

You can mimic all the behaviours a fish ever displays with a relatively simple computer program

so, Petersko decided it was not ethical to agree with me and he had to think fish were unconscious.
we agree that it's not all black and white.
but the very fact that for instance you can't catch a fish because it flees before you seems to me to put them in the group of those that are still obviously conscious.

but i'll take in the proposition to use a simple computer program intead of experimenting on animals

--------------------
i dont support it i love animals too much. except for monkeys. so do ur crap on monkeys and babies, but leave the cute ones alone.
--------------------
^ WTF?!!!
That is so wrong. especially since monkeys (well..chimps, which are often tested on) are one of our closest relatives...and very intelligent.

don't worry, i think (s)he was kidding. the "baby" in the sentence shows the sarcasm.

 

[JerryBlunted]

the millions of cows that live in warehouses didn't breed and come to life "naturally".
they were created by man (artificial insemination).

which means that instead of eating a relatively small amount of vegetables, man decides to create animals that didn't exist, make them suffer, feed them huge amounts of plants, and kill them to eat a small amount of meat (compared to what could have fed the plants eaten instead)
where does all the south-american corn production go? to the north-american created cows.

It is somewhat incorrect to claim cows were created by man. Currently they are a domesticated species, which means they don't exist without human support, however that is not their original status. Even if we didn't decide to eat cows at some point in history or to domesticate them there still would be tons of cows roaming around eating grass and other plant life. I don't think it is possible to compare the theoretical feral cow population to what we have now though, so I can't say what kind of resources they would be consuming.

The reason people eat meat, in addition to it being a culturally enshrined practices as well as quite tasty, is that you gain different nutrients from a cow than you do from the stuff a cow eats. People who abstain from eating meat have to take supplements in order to meet their full dietary requirments, I've know a couple vegans who got anemia before they figured this out. This is hardly "natural" (note the sneer quotes) either.

What this has to do with animal laboratory testing I do not know. What I do know is that I was doing a research project on the treatment of autism spectrum conditions and I was sort of amazed to see how much experimentation on primates had gone on in this field up until the mid-1980s, at which point it drops off precipitously. They were able to produce autistic-like behaviors (asociality, withdrawal from physical contact, violent reactions to seemingly inconsequential disturbances) in monkeys by damaging the amygdala, which happens to be abnormally developed in many humans who suffer from ASCs. Interesting, yet gruesome.

 

[skywise]

People have been subjugating their environment since long before Christianity. Domestication of plants and animals occurred in the late Neolithic Period.... Christianity arose 2000 years ago, we already had a long standing tradition of domination over nature by this point. Materialist philosophy, which is the backbone of most western philosophy, and especially Decartes helped to further this viewpoint.

I go to an extremely liberal college so I am used to hearing all the post modern, feminist, anti-Christian views on why the world is so messed up. And it is messed up, but I think many people just like to tear down what others build up without providing a viable alternative. It is a lot easier to be critical than it is to be constructive. It comes down to pragmatists versus idealists in many cases, though with pragmatists you need to wonder what their motives and goals are, idealists make it obvious.

Yeah, you're right, it didn't start with Christianity. I should have said, the system of thought that is most recently mythologized in the Christian story of creation. It doesn't change the fact that its a dying way of thinking. We used to think our planet was the center of the universe and us the pinnacle of god's creation. Now, thinks to Copernicus, we realize we're just a dot (if that) in a gigantic universe. We used to like to think we were separate from animals in that we no longer had its brutish instincts. Instead we were ruled by reason and morality. Then Freud came along and showed that we have the same instincts as anything else, we just know how to hide them. We used to think we were God's special creation. Now, thanks to Darwin, we're the product of contingency.

We still haven't let go completely of our ideas of "specialness," but pick up any modernist or post-modernist literature and you'll see its a dying way of thinking. If the higher literature of an age is representative of where it's people are going (and i think it is), more and more it seems like the human race isn't any better, or special, or superior than anything else.

 

[zorn]

^^^ Uhh... you're not saying you actually consider postmodernist "theory" to be higher literature, are you?

I guarantee you that outside perhaps a few humanities departments the idea that mankind is 'special' is not in the slightest danger of dying. I find it pretty obvious, but that's just me.

This whole argument of whether humans are "superior" to [other] animals, now, that's another matter. What the hell does it mean to say "humans are superior to animals" or "humans are inferior to animals"? Jack shit, that's what, which makes the whole debate rather silly. IMO.

where does all the south-american corn production go? to the north-american created cows.

Actually, if you take into account the fact that livestock eat a lot of food that humans can't eat -- we don't have four stomachs or whatever, we can't digest cellulose, etc -- as well as the fact that livestock can be raised on a lot of land (eg Texas) that is no good for growing regular crops, it turns out that eating meat does not significantly reduce the amount of edible food that has to be grown.

Indeed in some cases it may reduce it -- eg the UN has estimated that California dairy cows produce 1.01 times the total calories and 1.82 times the protein that they consume, in human-edible terms. Cows raised for beef yield 85% the calories but still 1.2 times the protein of their food.

cf http://www.fao.org/docrep/x5303e/x5303e0e.htm

but the very fact that for instance you can't catch a fish because it flees before you seems to me to put them in the group of those that are still obviously conscious.

Uh, do you consider the Sony AIBO[/quote] to be conscious? Seems to me that your definition is in need of some modification.

I don't think fish are conscious... nor plants, nor insects, nor (say) starfish. I know I'm conscious, and I'm pretty sure most other people are too. Human infants, human fetuses, monkeys, are definitely debatable cases. Other mammals, maybe.

But I definitely wouldn't ascribe consciousness -- in the sense of having thoughts/feelings/a personal interest in one's future -- to much beyond that. Certainly such animals do not possess the portions of the brain that seem inextricably linked to thought, emotion, sense of self, etc.

 

[vegan]

It is somewhat incorrect to claim cows were created by man. Currently they are a domesticated species, which means they don't exist without human support, however that is not their original status

you have just explained that apart from been created quantitatively, they have also been created qualitatively.
thanks

Even if we didn't decide to eat cows at some point in history or to domesticate them there still would be tons of cows roaming around eating grass and other plant life

wishful thinking
cows have been domesticated for around 10.000 years.
so they had a few millions years before that to overpopulate. which they didn't.

The reason people eat meat, … is that you gain different nutrients from a cow than you do from the stuff a cow eats.

oh yeah?
and just what?

People who abstain from eating meat have to take supplements in order to meet their full dietary requirments

you should better than to tell this to someone who's login is "vegan"
if you don't know about something, please don't say anything.
i hate myths started by people inventing what they wish to be true.

I've know a couple vegans who got anemia before they figured this out

oh, people always have a close friend who's uncle knows someone who has seen a ghost. but a real ghost. they exist, the guy's seen one.
give me a rest, i can't even remember the last time i had to go to the doctor.

where does all the south-american corn production go? to the north-american created cows

Actually, if you take into account the fact that livestock eat a lot of food that humans can't eat

can you eat corn?
ok, thanks. that all i wanted to know.

it turns out that eating meat does not significantly reduce the amount of edible food that has to be grown

"About 38% of the world's grain production is now fed to livestock. In the USA this amounts to about 135 million tons of grain, sufficient to feed a population of 400 million on a vegan diet"

Cows raised for beef yield 85% the calories but still 1.2 times the protein of their food.

and as a matter of fact, omnivorous americans eat up to 4 times the amount of protein needed -> it's more important not to spoiling calories than protein

Uh, do you consider the Sony AIBO

to be conscious? Seems to me that your definition is in need of some modification. [/QUOTE]a fish is an animal, not a machine that we have created and of which we can explain mechanically the reactions.
so ok, let me ad that my definition of consciousness applies to organic creatures and not man-made machines… until ghost in the shell comes true.

48.7% of all statistics are made up.

 

[JerryBlunted]

you have just explained that apart from been created quantitatively, they have also been created qualitatively.
thanks

I don't follow what you are trying to say here... are you talking about the changes in animal species following domestication? If so what does that have to do with this debate?

oh yeah?
and just what?
you should better than to tell this to someone who's login is "vegan"
if you don't know about something, please don't say anything.
i hate myths started by people inventing what they wish to be true.
oh, people always have a close friend who's uncle knows someone who has seen a ghost. but a real ghost. they exist, the guy's seen one.
give me a rest, i can't even remember the last time i had to go to the doctor.

You are trying to tell me with a vegan diet you don't need to take vitamin or mineral supplements to make up for the iron, protein, and other essential nutrients that most people normally obtain from eating meat? This is not a myth, its called a "balanced diet." I don't wish you to be anemic or sick, I think you have a very distorted view on what other people think about your habits. I don't give a shit if you eat meat or not, but most people who choose to abstain will be smart enough to make up for it.

can you eat corn?
ok, thanks. that all i wanted to know.
"About 38% of the world's grain production is now fed to livestock. In the USA this amounts to about 135 million tons of grain, sufficient to feed a population of 400 million on a vegan diet"

Corn isn't the only thing cows eat. They are ruminants which means they eat grass and other types of produce which are indigestible to a human. That is why they need four stomachs in order to digest it all. Speaking of grain production, there is no shortage of grain as it stands right now. Even using 38% of it to feed animals we still have enough for our purposes. The people around the world who are starving tend to live in areas without as much arable land as the United States, thus the appearance of a shortage of food. I consider it highly unethical to pay farmers NOT to grow crops in order to drive the price up (subsidies) when you could be paying them to grow crops to distribute in the developing countries, but this brings in a whole host of logistical problems (all solvable) which are the real problem. Transportation and distribution, not total production, are the obstacles.

a fish is an animal, not a machine that we have created and of which we can explain mechanically the reactions.
so ok, let me ad that my definition of consciousness applies to organic creatures and not man-made machines… until ghost in the shell comes true.

But, what if we CAN explain the reactions of a creature? What about a paramecium (sp?) or a virus? What about the fruit fly... these are all organic creatures which are simple enough for us to understand the vast majority of the mechanics behind their life processes, and there ain't much room for consciousness in there. If these examples of living creatures are not considered conscious are all living creatures conscious or does it go on a sort of sliding scale? These are unanswered questions at this point, and I believe it is usually best to err on the side of caution. However, life demands destruction of life from time to time. Do you hesitate to wipe a mosquito off your arm or spray lysol to disinfect a countertop? If you value all life at an equal level those actions make you a murderer.

 

[vegan]

you have just explained that apart from been created quantitatively, they have also been created qualitatively.
thanks

I don't follow what you are trying to say here... are you talking about the changes in animal species following domestication? If so what does that have to do with this debate?

hey, don't ask me!
you said "Currently they are a domesticated species … however that is not their original status"
so yourself added to the fact that the quantity of cows is created that the domesticated cow in itself is a creation of man.

You are trying to tell me with a vegan diet you don't need to take vitamin or mineral supplements … ?

yeap, that's what i'm saying.
to go into details, i can add that whereas vegetarians have nothing to worry whatsoever, vegans who live in cities might want to take a B12 supplements since it is the ONLY indispensable nutrient that can't be found in vegetables (except if they are not washed of the dirt in which they grew). it's present in dairy products, so it doesn't concern vegetarians.

other essential nutrients that most people normally obtain from eating meat

and just what nutrients? iron and protein are easily found in vegetal foods.

This is not a myth

yeah right!
and if you take lsd you'll turn into orange juice. it's not a myth, they say it on tv.

I think you have a very distorted view on what other people think about your habits

i think you don't know anything (but myths) about vegetarianism

most people who choose to abstain will be smart enough to make up for it.

most people who choose to abstain will be smart enough to inform themselves and learn that there is nothing to make up for.

They are ruminants which means they eat grass

you've seen a lot of grass in cement warehouses?

there is no shortage of grain as it stands right now

for a cosy american, there sure is not. but since the usa are neither the center, nor the only country on this planet.
you have to take other countries into account too..
i had argentinean flatmates when the crisis happened 2 years ago. they were telling me "our country grows everything we need, but people have to pillage shops because they don't have access to the food".
their production was sold to other countries (for your cows for instance) who had more money to pay.

The people around the world who are starving tend to live in areas without as much arable land as the United States

- cf the example of argentina, a country that has 0.8% of permanent crops whereas the usa have 0.22% (argentina has 1/3 the us size and 1/7 of its population)
- doesn't it seem more ethical to export the "no shortage of grain" to areas of the world where people are dying of hunger because they have no arable land than to use it to feed man-created animals?

What about the fruit fly... these are all organic creatures which are simple enough for us to understand the vast majority of the mechanics behind their life processes

the life processes and the behaviour are 2 different things.
there are also a lot of mechanisms we can understand about humans' life processes, but that doesn't make us unconscious machines.
sure you can understand a drosophila's reproduction or the chemical reaction that makes it want to feed, but also can you about a human.
can you guess in advance which way a fly in liberty is going to fly? no. it has some free will, consciousness, whatever you want to call it

there ain't much room for consciousness in there

it's as much generalizing as saying "humans don't have any consciousness, they're machines programmed to want to eat, fuck and feel warm, they all do".
of course all animals will have similar basic behaviours that you can explain, as does man. not much to do with consciousness

Do you hesitate to wipe a mosquito off your arm or spray lysol to disinfect a countertop?

i blow hard on the mosquito and don't know what lysol is.
i know i unwillingly kill animals (walking for instance). but killing the ones i don't see doesn't make it alright to kill the ones i can spare.

 

[Cimora]

I don't think fish are conscious... nor plants, nor insects, nor (say) starfish. I know I'm conscious, and I'm pretty sure most other people are too. Human infants, human fetuses, monkeys, are definitely debatable cases. Other mammals, maybe.

But I definitely wouldn't ascribe consciousness -- in the sense of having thoughts/feelings/a personal interest in one's future -- to much beyond that. Certainly such animals do not possess the portions of the brain that seem inextricably linked to thought, emotion, sense of self, etc.

But what does your attribution of conciousness really mean?

You have thoughts, but they are the product of processes you are in fact unaware of, and they are often just plain wrong or conflabulated- your concious tells you why you decided to do something AFTER youve started already doing it, this has been measured. Your thoughts, feelings and personal interest are no more the whole picture of the events inside you, than the little dot is the whole picture to the fish.

In short, conciousness in the folk or commonly understood sense, just doesnt exist. What we call conciousness is a glimmer, a shadow, a puppet a mirror of what is really happening in our minds. To hold something so illusory in any high esteem would be a grave error IMO.

Can you see the thoughts of animals? Or do you use only your bodies primitive empathy and recognition systems to ascribe what is familiar or alien with properties of conciousness or not?

As some1 whos done lot of psychology, i wouldnt put alot of faith in what subjectivity tells you, the mind poorly reflects reality.

Things like our sense of humans being more important, is nothing more than our evolution-given empathy, which is designed for human beings to preserve our genes. When we look at a human face and see mind and a crocodile and see less, its not because of any empirical basis, its because its useful for our genes to see mind in man, and not in his cousins and brothers. This "human empathy" biology, is behind alot of human thought, and its quite the primitive way to see the world IMO, for there are deeper and subtler dependancies than man apon man.

 

[JerryBlunted]

i think you don't know anything (but myths) about vegetarianism
most people who choose to abstain will be smart enough to inform themselves and learn that there is nothing to make up for.

My girlfriend of 3 1/2 years is a vegetarian, and most most nights out of the week I eat a vegetarian diet because it it too much of a pain in the ass to cook two separate meals for two people. So don't presume. Despite the fact that she is a vegetarian and still drinks milk, eats eggs, etc. she takes dietary supplements which were recommended by her physician.

you've seen a lot of grass in cement warehouses?
for a cosy american, there sure is not. but since the usa are neither the center, nor the only country on this planet.
you have to take other countries into account too..
i had argentinean flatmates when the crisis happened 2 years ago. they were telling me "our country grows everything we need, but people have to pillage shops because they don't have access to the food".

I've seen a lot of cows eating grass in fenced in pens. I come from upstate New York and you see them everywhere it is not at all uncommon. As far as the Argentinian example, I don't know what to say about it. The reason there is shortage there doesn't have to do with us. We have enough grain to feed our own cows but if they are producing it for SOOO much cheaper (due to lower wages for labor I guess?) than obviously farmers will buy it. That is where a tariff would be a good idea, I guess. As I said before, the world as it is today has more than enough capacity to produce food for the total population, however the capacity is unevenly distributed. In the mountains of Afghanistan they can't grow too much, in the Gobi Desert they can't grow too much. In Kansas, yeah they can grow stuff. I would prefer to see our excess production be used for humanitarian causes rather than our current system of subsidies, but as I said it brings in a whole bunch of logistical problems which need to be addressed.

 

[vegan]

her physician (?) wants her to think he's useful and that she has to go back to him.
if he said the truth (= you have nothing to worry about), he wouldn't get the money of the next consultation.
then of course it's possible to advise a vegetarian on how to have a healthy diet. like it's possible to advise an omnivore. that's nothing specific of the vegetarian diet. a veg who eats only rice will have a bad health, and so will someone who only eats meat.
"you have to eat varied products" is as true for a veg as for an omnivore.
so help your girlfriend save money, tell her greedy physician to fuck off and give the supplements to someone who needs them.
"omnivorous dieticians know about vegetarianism" is almost as true as "the DEA knows about drugs"
dieticians repeat blindly what they have learned, be it true or false. and in a strongly omnivorous and biased society, what they have learned is mainly myths.
if you want to see how a veg fares without supplements, come over here, i'll be glad to go jogging

I've seen a lot of cows eating grass in fenced in pens

how many have you seen and how many are actually produced?
intensive farms and slaughterhouses have walls, not windows. you don't see what's inside.
the cows in the field are the top of the iceberg whereas the ones that live in cells are the immerged part of the iceberg. but we believe there's nothing hidden underneath what we see.
extensive farming is about 10% of total farming. which leaves 90% of animals to live on concrete.

 

[vegan]

i couldn't resist :

the meatrix

no it's no out of topic! it's about jerryblunted's post

 

[justsomeguy]

I don't think one person here supports animal testing and research for cosmetics and other rather "superficial" human ends.

Many of those posting, but not all, do support animal testing and research in the name of life-saving medicines and treatments. Cancer research seems like a fair and possibly the best ends for which to sacrifice rats and other animals.

But cosmetic and ameliorative research are not the only types of research animals are used for. Behavioral psychology is a field where mice, rats, guinea pigs, and many other mammals are used.

My question is who thinks that the use of rats and other animals is appropriate for behavioral research? Is it ethical or even useful to spend our resources (money, scientists' time, the animals themselves) containing, castrating, injecting, dissecting, and generally experiementing upon animals for the appropriation of knowledge? What are we humans hoping to learn about our own behavior or about the animals under observation's behavior?

Cosmetic research isn't acceptable, but is research into, say, rat sexuality allowable and useful?

 

[fizzygirl]

Research into sexuality has given us a lot of info regarding the origins of homosexuality, which has led many people to change the way they view people that are homosexual (if we see it as being more a thing of nature than of choice).

we also know a lot about the ways animals can learn and how eating disorders come about due to some of this research

the cosmetic research is generally one thats agreed as being unnecessary nowadays, and most companies have the "not tested on animals" on it, which is a little misleading, as everything that goes into those products has to have been shown to not cause harm to humans before it could go on the market. those products that are not tested on animals are allowed to do that because other products led the way and tested those ingredients first. i still think its a great thing that these companies choose to use things that we already know are safe and so don't unnecessarily require more testing just to be on the cutting edge of makeup. some do, however, and that's how we get a lot of the new things that come out, but a product that doesn't might only be that way because they were the 3rd person to use the ingredient that got tested for someone else :/ in the same sort of vein though, it is in the best interest of researchers that *do* animal research to share their findings as much as possible in order to avoid duplicating studies unnecessarily

 

[fizzygirl]

ooooh...as for school uses though, a lot of time rats are used to demonstrate behavioral learning processes in some classes, and, although the rats are not harmed for these classes, they have been very good at coming up with software that can teach these principles without the actual animals. in this case they are really not necessary because most of these students will never be working with the actual animals this way, but will only be taking the principles for their future studies. Sniffy the virtual rat is one of these programs...it's one thing that i would think could actually be good to encourage psych depts to switch to without any loss of the actual lesson ideas and probably not too much objection from profs or students.