Ethical and welfare considerations when using cephalopods as experimental animals

26 pages, 8 tables

When using cephalopods as experimental animals, a number of factors, including morality, quality of information derived from experiments, and public perception, drives the motivation to consider welfare issues. Refinement of methods and techniques is a major step in ensuring protection of cephalopod welfare in both laboratory and field studies. To this end, existing literature that provides details of methods used in the collection, handling, maintenance, and culture of a range of cephalopods is a useful starting point when refining and justifying decisions about animal welfare. This review collates recent literature in which authors have used cephalopods as experimental animals, revealing the extent of use and diversity of cephalopod species and techniques. It also highlights several major issues when considering cephalopod welfare; how little is known about disease in cephalopods and its relationship to senescence and also how to define objective endpoints when animals are stressed or dying as a result of the experiment

This paper was produced as a result of a workshop held as part of CIAC ’06 on Feb 2–3 2006, in which we discussed issues associated with using cephalopods as experimental animals. We would like to thank the School of Aquaculture, University of Tasmania for hosting the workshop. JEARM’s participation in the CIAC 2006 Symposium was funded by the Provost’s Office for Graduate Studies (USP), FAPESP, and CAPES/PROAP. RV was supported by the Centre de Refere`ncia de Recerca i Desenvolupament en Aqu¨ icultura, CIRIT, Generalitat de Catalunya and the Programa para Movilidad de Investigadores of the Spanish Ministry of Science

Peer reviewed