Question: have you make friends with the mice

Ross King answered on 6 Nov 2015:

I try not to! I’ve been working with mice for such a long time now that I’ve learned to keep my feelings quite separate from my work. Obviously, when you are first starting out, it can be quite difficult.

Working with mice is an absolute privilege and it’s not something I take for granted. The UK has some of the toughest laws, rules and regulations in the world to make sure that scientists like me work responsibly with animals. We are always thinking about how we can reduce the number of animals we use, how we can improve experiments to reduce the animal’s stress and how we can replace experiments on animals with other kinds of experiments, such as growing cells in dishes or using computers.