Massive PETA ‘Spider’ to Expose JHU’s Web of Lies About Owl Experiments
For Immediate Release:
January 25, 2022
Contact:
Amanda Hays 202-483-7382
PETA’s can’t-be-missed 40-foot “spider” will wind her web around the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) campus on Thursday to expose the web of lies that JHU is spinning around experimenter Shreesh Mysore’s deadly experiments on owls.
When: Thursday, January 27, 12 noon
Where: JHU, at the intersection of N. Charles and E. 34th streets, Baltimore
Mysore cuts into barn owls’ skulls, implants electrodes in their brains, restrains them, clamps their eyes open, and bombards them with sounds and lights for up to 12 hours. When the owls’ brains become too damaged for additional tests, he kills them.
JHU claims that these taxpayer-funded experiments can somehow help treat attention disorders in humans—but owls’ auditory and visual systems differ greatly from those of humans, and Mysore has publicly admitted that he may “misinterpret” what’s happening in the brains of the birds whose heads he bolts into place. The experiments’ absurdity is matched only by their recent illegality, as he failed for years to obtain mandatory permits to use owls in this laboratory.
“Studying the brains of trapped, terrified birds as they’re forced to stare at computer screens tells us nothing about human attention disorders,” says PETA Vice President Shalin Gala. “JHU should stop trying to defend the indefensible, drop the owl torture, and commit to funding ethical, effective, animal-free research instead.”
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information about PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
