13 Eye-Opening Images of Animals in Labs

Published April 16, 2015 by PETA Staff. Last Updated December 30, 2019.

The pain that animals face every day for product testing, crude curiosity-driven experiments, and deadly medical training exercises are completely horrifying and indefensible. Animals are not disposable laboratory tools, they are individuals just like us who want to be free and don’t want to be forced to endure lives of pain and terror. Take a look at the faces of animal testing and see why we should end experimentation on animals.

Rats and Mice

Rats and mice are not even considered animals under the federal Animal Welfare Act, even though they make up approximately 95 percent of the animals suffering in labs.

Dogs and Cats

Animals, like this beagle, endured unimaginable suffering at the hands of workers at the North Carolina facility PLRS before a PETA undercover investigation prompted felony cruelty charges to be brought against employees at the facility, which closed its doors shortly after our footage was released.

In a crude experiment at the University of Utah, this cat, named Robert, had an electrode implanted into his brain.

Goats and Pigs

The US Department of Defense uses goats, pigs, and other animals for military training exercises, including some that involve live animals being hacked to pieces with tree trimmers.

Monkeys and Primates

These two young chimpanzees were confined at SEMA, a notoriously cruel Maryland laboratory that PETA helped expose a quarter-century ago. Sadly, chimpanzees still suffer in cruel laboratory experiments at other laboratories.

Britches was torn away from his mother shortly after birth, had his eyes sewn shut by experimenters at the University of California–Riverside, and was left alone in a steel cage with a sonar device strapped to his head.

Animal experimenters at the National Institutes of Health continue to perform pointless experiments on baby monkeys wherein the young are separated from their mothers and intentionally frightened.

Monkeys and cats are sometimes confined to restraint chairs during invasive neurological tests, like this one, who is shown at the Weizmann Institute in Israel.

These terrified monkeys are being prepped to have experimental chemicals forced up their noses by employees at Covance, a private laboratory that other companies pay to conduct tests on animals.

These monkeys are a few of the thousands of monkeys imprisoned at the Oregon National Primate Research Center, which was the subject of a PETA undercover investigation.