WIKIMEDIA, MATTHIEU GODBOUTA recent study out of Oregon State University suggested that school teachers in North America could be contributing to the invasive species problem by releasing the live animals they use as teaching tools. “As many as 1,000 different non-native organisms used in the classroom are being released into the wild by school teachers,” Oregon State’s Sam Chan said in a press release. As such, the study is being used by some as an argument against the use of animals in the classroom. I strongly disagree with these sentiments. The release of a handful of classroom animals is unlikely to have any major repercussions on the local ecosystem. Rather, I would venture to guess, this supposed environmental concern is merely a scare story driven by people who oppose vivisection, or the use of live animal dissection for teaching purposes.
What are we talking about here? “Oregon teachers who have ordered crayfish that originate in the Pacific Northwest have found that their mortality is extremely high, so many have taken to ordering crayfish from distributors who get their supply from Louisiana,” Chan explained in the release. “The problem is that we have no idea whether those crayfish may carry diseases or parasites that may be problematic if those animals are released into the wild here.”
It may of course be true that Louisiana crayfish carry disease, but how many animals are actually released into the wild by this particular route? Chan is pretty vague about the numerical extent of this grave problem. What about the thousands of live animals indiscriminately thrown away by restaurants, fish ...
