Question 14: Where do scientists get their animals?

There are two kinds of lab animals.

One is animals that can come from almost anywhere. Backyard breeders, who breed less than a certain amount of animals per year, can sell their unsold animals to dealers or to testing facilities. These dealers usually have to supply some medical papers proving that the animals don't have diseases that might spread to the rest of the lab, or have any kind of extreme medical conditions.

The other is animals that are a different story. They are bred, and raised, to be lab animals. This means they have to satisfy a number of conditions so that the information gotten from them will be useful to humans. They have to be the average mouse or chimpanzee, without heart conditions, genetic anomalies, or particularly bad viruses. Labs have special needs, and if they need a lot of lab mice that are designed to be obese, or to be diabetic, or bald, they can call a lab and have many engineered for them.

Citation

Aps http://www.the-aps.org/mm/SciencePolicy/AnimalResearch/Publications/animals/quest5.htm

Quora

https://www.quora.com/How-do-scientists-get-animals-for-experiments