Animal-Free Biology Education
Table of Contents
Introduction
Having live or dead animals in the classroom comes with a number of complications, which can be bad for the animals themselves, students, educators, and even the environment.
Chicks are neglected each year, imprint on humans, and the survivors are then sent back to the supply companies for disposal, or end up in animal shelters.
Frog harvesting for dissections has caused local extinctions of sought-after species.
Cats often come from shelters which is upsetting to students.
Fetal pigs come from factory farms and can contribute to ecological and health problems including antibiotic resistance.
Toxic chemicals are used to preserve bodies.
Bodies degrade and can only be used once.
Dissection Alternatives
Problems with Dissection
Dissection Discourages STEM Students
Data has shown that many students interested in veterinary and other animal or science-related fields have been put off their biology path by dissection practices.
Animal Welfare & Ethics of Sourcing
Other downsides to dissection include driving certain species of frog to extinction when sketchy companies harvest them from the wild. Most animals used for dissection are taken from the wild, but some companies breed animals for use in science. Some come from slaughterhouses, but most upsetting for students is learning that some animals come from shelters, or are even stolen pets.
Toxic Chemicals, Energy Use, & Inefficiency
There is serious wastefulness in the use of corpses that require refrigeration and toxic/carcinogenic chemicals, yet still decay past usefulness, meaning they cannot be used multiple times. These factors make dissection quite costly for schools.
As we attempt to teach students about environmental and ethical responsibility, we should consider solutions that avoid hypocrisy, while still engaging students in up-to-date science.
Alternatives to Traditional Dissection
Animal Dissection vs. Non-Animal Alternatives: A Cost Comparison (Cost analysis, Graphs, and Resources, PDF) - AnimaLearn
Animals Used in Education (Article) Topics include:
Dissection is academically unnecessary.
Dissection harms animals.
Dissection is hazardous to the environment.
Dissection can be hazardous to students.
Dissection instills a view that animal life is expendable.
Dissection is economically wasteful.
You Can Make a Difference! with suggestions on ways to get involved.
NAVS Advancing Science without Harming Animals
Chick Hatching Project Alternative Lesson Plan for Sanctuaries and other lesson plans - Open Sanctuary
High School Dissections Are a Science Class Tradition. But Are They Doing More Harm Than Good? (Article, Photos of SynFrogs, 2020) "Dissections may actually be turning some students away from STEM." - Discover
Meet SynFrog - The SynDaver Synthetic Frog (3:30 min Video) - SynDaver
New non-animal testing lab in Windsor first of its kind in Canada "The lab will use human cells and tissues from cadavers, as well as 3D printing, to produce replicas of human tissue." and "The CCAAM is also working with the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board to eliminate animal dissections in classrooms, with the intention of replacing real frogs with fake ones." - CBC
SynDaver CopyCat - Introduction to CopyCat (8:55 min Video of synthetic cat) - SynDaver
Reusable Synesthetic Animals for Dissection
A few companies are now making life-like animals for biology students. Even with their fairly high up-front cost, they can save a school a huge amount of money over time. Alternatively, there are patterns like this DIY frog-shaped knitting pattern with life-like organs.
DIY Options
If you can't knit, crochet, or sew yourself, you may be able to get local volunteers to make some reusable animals for dissection. Etsy is full of artists who are willing to create for a fee, but it could also be worth asking around at your local library, retirement homes, or civic buildings to see if there are any knitting clubs or enthusiasts who are willing to make such fun projects.
Chick-Hatching Alternative
Chick-hatching may seem harmless, but the following includes some of the ethical problems with this unfortunately common practice.
"Every year, primary school teachers and their students place thousands of fertilized eggs in classroom incubators to be hatched within three to four weeks. These birds are not only deprived of a mother; many grow sick and deformed because their exacting needs are not met during incubation and after hatching. Body organs stick to the sides of shells because they are not rotated properly. Eggs can hatch on weekends when no one is in school. The heat may be turned off for the weekend causing the embryos to become crippled or die in the shell. Commercial suppliers' eggs hatch an abnormally high number of deformed birds reflecting the limited gene pool from which they derive. Some teachers even remove an egg from the incubator every other day and open it up to look at the embryo in various stages of development, even though this results in the death of the embryo.
When the project is over, these now unwanted birds may be left in boxes in the main office for many hours without food, water or adequate ventilation waiting to be collected for disposal. Students and even some teachers are misled to believe that the birds surviving at the end of the project are going to live out their lives happily on a farm. In reality, most of them are going to be killed immediately as working farms do not assimilate school project birds into their existing flocks. Some birds will be sold to live poultry markets and auctions, while others will be fed to captive zoo animals.
Each year, animal shelters across the country are brought unwanted chicks, ducklings, quails and even turkeys by educators who cannot find homes for them. Nearly all of these birds are killed immediately because there are no homes for them or because they arrive sick. Residential zoning laws usually ban keeping domestic fowl. Even those people who can provide a good home can accommodate only so many birds. Normal flocks have several female birds to one male. Roosters crow before dawn and during the day. This sometimes poses a problem for people willing to take them and may lead to complaints from neighbors." - United Federation of Teachers
Chick-Free Alternatives
Beaks, Feet and Feathers "was developed with the support of the Forging Partnerships Program administered by the Natural Resource Advisory Council on behalf of the government of New South Wales."
Bird Watching as an Alternative to Chick Hatching (PDF) For grades 2-6, 4-6 weeks, Objective: "Create models of non-intrusive, productive animal research through natural (non-manipulative) observations."
Lesson Plans Activities: Chick Hatching Project Alternatives
Chick Hatching Project Alternative Lesson Plan for Sanctuaries
Chick Life Cycle Exploration Set "Crack open this set of 21 eggs and see the day-by-day development of a chick. No incubator required!"
The Hatching of a Chick (PDF) This educational PowerPoint explains the talks about chickens, then the daily development that happens inside a chicken egg including photos and colorful drawings.
Hatching Good Lessons: Alternatives To School Hatching Projects
Hatching Programs "School Hatching Programs are often undertaken with only the best of intentions. However, the outcomes for birds, students and teachers are often far from positive. As a sanctuary, we are uniquely positioned to see the outcome that befalls many of the birds in these programs, and we hope their stories touch your heart as they have touched ours." Scroll down on the page for resources and suggestions for chick hatching alternatives, such as taking students to visiting your local animal sanctuary.
How to Teach the Chicken Egg Hatching Process in School Ethically "Find out how you can teach your kids about the chicken egg hatching process, in a kind and ethical way, while helping children to learn responsibly."
School Hatching Projects “Ethical questions are raised when unwanted animals are brought into this world, diminishing our sense of the inherent value of the living creature. The positive lesson that can come from observing and respecting normal parenting of adult birds for their future offspring is lost. In these school hatching projects, any sense of parent birds carefully preparing nests and tending their future babies is lost because the eggs are hatched in a piece of equipment. The surviving chicks are usually doomed to a life expectancy of a few days spent miserably. Young birds need nurturing and rest. They are difficult to feed in the classroom and can suffer starvation and dehydration that is not even noticed.”
Which Embryo Is Human? Photos and explanations about embryo development among different species, DNA molecules, and genes.
Resources & Guides
North America
USA
NAVS: Replacing Classroom Dissection "Keeping the “Life” in “Life Sciences” Modern, non-animal teaching methods are more effective, less expensive, and more humane than traditional animal dissection. It’s time to make humane education the norm."
Organizations
North America
USA
NAVS "With your help, we can put an end to harmful, flawed and costly animal experiments through the advancement of smarter, human-relevant research and the promotion of animal-friendly changes to laws and policies. "
Some of the organizations listed on our Vegan Activism page work on replacing animal lab testing and school dissections as well, so feel free to check if there are any listed for your region!