University of Wisconsin experimenters claimed to have recently discovered that like humans, rats can experience a type of post-traumatic stress disorder. Such a finding should beg the question, if we’re now able to recognize the depth of these animals’ suffering, why do we continue to subject them to cruel and archaic experiments?

Rats feel pain, fear, distress, loneliness and joy just as we do. These highly social animals communicate with each other using high-frequency sounds. They become emotionally attached to each other, love their families and easily bond with human guardians. Male rats sing after engaging in sex and infant rats giggle when they are tickled.

Not only do rats express empathy when another rat or a human they know is in distress, they also exhibit altruism — they put themselves in harm’s way rather than allowing another being to suffer.

Despite the overwhelming evidence about how intelligent and empathetic rats are, experimenters continue to poison, burn, starve and otherwise torment them in cruel and ineffective experiments. At the end of these experiments, most of the 100 million mice and rats in laboratories are killed by having their necks broken, being asphyxiated or decapitated with a guillotine or scissors.

Even though rats and mice experience suffering just as dogs and cats do, they aren’t even considered to be “animals” under the Animal Welfare Act, the only federal law that provides at least some meager protections to animals in laboratories.

If rats and mice were considered animals under the Animal Welfare Act, researchers would have to provide basic care for them, which would solve the issue at hand. But due to the fact these animals are not considered animals, experimenters are not even required to provide them with pain relief.

Knowing that traumatic events create lasting fear in rats, it should give us all a reason to help get these sensitive and intelligent animals out of laboratories.

Mitch Goldsmith ([email protected]) is a Research Associate in Norfolk, Virginia.