Engraved Pennies Blasting Johns Hopkins Owl Experiments Put Into Circulation in Baltimore

For Immediate Release:
November 16, 2021

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

In a push for Johns Hopkins University (JHU) to end its deadly experiments on owls—whose skulls are cut into, brains are implanted with electrodes, bodies are constrained by tight jackets, and eyes and ears are bombarded by lights and sounds for up to 12 hours at a time—this week PETA is putting into circulation in the Baltimore area thousands of one-cent pieces, all embossed with the message “Free the JHU Owls,” and sending two to every member of the university staff and surrounding area residents.

Enclosed with the mailed coins is a letter detailing how JHU experimenter Shreesh Mysore doesn’t give tuppence (a British expression meaning “couldn’t care less”) when it comes to the birds he cages in a laboratory or the $1.9 million in public funds his tests have squandered.

“The suffragists made their plea for liberation with use of engraved pennies, and PETA is doing the same on behalf of imprisoned owls,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “PETA is asking the Johns Hopkins University community to demand an end to these owls’ torture in cruel experiments and their release to a reputable wildlife sanctuary.”

PETA notes that Mysore previously conducted these invasive brain experiments without valid state-mandated permits for years—in other words, illegally—and admitted that results from these experiments can be “misinterpret[ed].” Listen to Mysore here.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.