Emma Schlabach / Chips

A TAIL OF SURVIVAL. Lexi Scharmer (‘16) opted to keep her rat, Stella, after taking the Learning and Behavior psychology course.

The animal labs in the psychology and biology departments are a means for students and faculty alike to enhance academic understanding in an ethical way. These labs facilitate the Learning and Behavior course as well as student and faculty research.

Professor of Psychology Kristy Gould teaches the Learning and Behavior course, which utilizes rats to study how learning happens.

“Students work in pairs and use operant conditioning to train their rats in behavioral laboratory experiments,” Gould said.

Lexi Scharmer (‘16) previously took the class led by Gould.

“You put them in an operant chamber,” Scharmer said. “At first you just teach it how to press a lever, which is kind of a process because rats don’t just naturally press a lever.  And then you do different experiments on different schedules of reinforcement.”

After the course ended, Scharmer was given a choice about the future of her rat.

“You have the option to keep it, so I decided to keep my rat,” Scharmer said.

If the rats are not kept by the students, they are sent over to the Physiology department, according to Professor of Biology Scott Carlson. Carlson said the rats are not traditionally dissected, but have small sections of tissue harvested.

“We study how those tissues work,” Carlson said. “We take the tissue and apply it to a lab setting.”

When the animals are not being used in a classroom setting, they are being used for in-depth research.

“This research will involve either the faculty members’ research, or it will involve student-generated projects,” Carlson said. 

Carlson is currently studying blood pressure response in rats to attempt to solve what stimulates high blood pressure. Carlson uses rats because of  their cardiovascular model.

“Their blood vessels offer a really good representation of how blood vessels work,” Carlson said.

Gould studies birds in her time outside of teaching.

“My area of research explores the cognitive abilities and intelligence of birds in the Corvid family,” Gould said. “Some of the things my students and I have been investigating are their ability to use tools, understand human gestures and recognize themselves in a mirror.”

According to Gould, she received her birds from her graduate adviser when he retired from the University of Nebraska. All of the other lab animals come from an outside company.

“Everything comes from Harlan Laboratories,” Carlson said. “It’s very, very difficult to raise your own colonies, so really you have to buy them from these places.”

According to Carlson, Luther’s rat research program is small due to cost and consideration of the animals.

“We save all rats because one of our goals is to minimize our rat usage,” Carlson said. “It’s expensive, and we don’t want to waste. These are live animals, and we are conscious of that.”

Across the world, animal testing is a widely debated topic that is taken very seriously by people of multiple viewpoints, as well as the faculty and students here at Luther.

“I think animal rights has been very important,” Carlson said. “It’s led to all of this governmental regulation to ensure for the welfare of the animals. I think that’s critical.”

Emma Schlabach / Chips
from learning to love. Lexi Scharmer (‘16) poses with her rat, Stella.

Luther is making strides to ensure ethical treatment of the lab animals happens here on campus.

“We treat them well when they are at Luther,” Scharmer said. “They have a very nice lab facility that they live in, and there are student workers that make sure the cages are cleaned and that they are fed all the time.”

Grant Goss (‘16) is currently in the Behavior and Learning class and shares some of the guidelines his class was given for animal testing, which were mandated by the American Psychological Association (APA).

“I think animal testing is important,” Goss said. “To complete any kind of research in psychology, or even biology or drug testing, would be incredibly difficult without it. But that doesn’t mean we can overlook or turn a blind eye to unethical treatment of animals. There definitely has to be a level of morality.”