How can animal testing work, when animals are so different from humans?
Animal models are not perfect representations of humans and scientists are well aware of this. But, they do serve as excellent substitutes (mostly using mice, rats and other small rodents) for humans. As the genomic revolution has come around and the genomes of both humans and animals have been sequenced, we have realized that there are much more similarities between humans and animals than there are differences. It has also enabled us to identify where humans and particular animals are identical, as some animals serve as accurate representatives of a human’s anatomy, while others may share identical biochemical pathways. Genomic knowledge has made it so that animal research can be much more specifically targeted and accurate when representing a human, thus correctly predicting a how a human will react. For example, mice are one of the most commonly used vertebrate species in animal research. This is because they small, easy to care for and for animal researchers to handle and work wit
