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Comment by thecodeboy | Hacker News Reader

I feel bad for the beetle in this experiment. It must have spent a lot of its energy reserve to emerge out of the frog, probably to have been swallowed again.

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Well the one where they immobilized the legs just got eaten, so... yeah.

The photos of the escape make me imagine the world's strangest motivational "hang in there" type of poster.

"Never say Never!" "There is no try, only do"

"There is no try, only doo doo"

I think they should rename the insect to the "Andy Dufresne Beetle" -- the escape totally reminds me of Shawshank Redemption.

"probably to have been swallowed again"

Likely not. Animal trials are usually one use, to get the best data. And the animals in use get usually killed afterwards anyway. If you like animals, you probably do not want to learn too many details about it all.

This depends, I used to work at a biotech company and when the dogs there were retired from their trial, the employees would typically "adopt" them and try and give them another good couple of months.

They usually didn't make it very long but it's something. This was dogs though, so advanced stages of the trial, early stage vermin definitely didn't get the same treatment.

Side story: I did IT there and could access just about any building on campus, but whenever I had to go to the animal testing building to do whatever maintenance it was, I had a security guard escort and loom over me wherever I went. From what I was told they had an animal rights group infiltrate and attempt to release all of the animals a couple of years before.

In the 1980s, Skinny Puppy was a popular band in the clubs and my social circles. Animal welfare was a real issue already. I purchased this album that was a fundraiser for the Animal Liberation Front, and really, my main takeaway from this smash hit song would be the horrors of Thalidomide and its devastating effects on the poor children and childbearing/pregnant mothers, in countries where the drug factories really didn't care about safety or humans or animals (I suppose that describes all of them).

https://youtu.be/bVnVcbuoyWU

I can believe that.

I went to a vegan restaurant once and met some randoms in London, I think it was a meetup.com thing. And one lady was telling me how she would happily take a lead pipe and hurt people working in animal testing.

I was shocked that someone would would share their violent ideals with a total stranger. I mean I could have been an undercover policeman or something...

And just to be clear, I definitely don't think hurting humans is a good idea.

"I mean I could have been an undercover policeman or something..."

If the police wanted to bust people hypothetically threatening other people with violence, they just have to look on social media a bit. But as far as I know, a vague hypothetical threat like this, would probably be dismissed by a court. I rather know, that there are many people walking freely around who do make not cague, but concrete threats to concrete people and the police usually says, they cannot do anything.

UK police has a multiple decades long history of infiltration of animal rights groups, though. They likely wouldn't try to act on a non-specific threat like that, because you're right it probably would get dismissed, but it's the kind of thing that certainly could trigger unwanted attention.

Especially would think someone with those kinds of views would be aware of the rather well publicised sordid history of UK police with infiltrating animal rights groups and been more cautious. Unless she was an undercover cop out fishing (I don't think it's likely, but who knows).

This was around 15 years ago, so maybe before the big recent stories about undercover-cops fathering children with their marks and vanishing etc.

I got the impression this lady I met was a little un-hinged / manic. Although more than capable of causing harassment to those unlucky to be in her path.

If you truly like animals, you probably want to learn all about it and see what you can do to stop it.

One must imagine the beetle happy

Duster — Me And The Birds starts playing

There is a version of beetle that incapacitates the frog's legs and eats it slowly while it is immobilized. Nature is metal.

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