Science and technology.Animal testing.Be nice to mice…and they may return the favour.Home, sweet home.ONLY one drug of every ten successfully tested in laboratory animals ends up working in people.One reason, of course, is that mice are not men.Another, though, might have to do with the fact that whereas human patients are afforded all manner of creature comforts, their animal proxies are not.Although medical science's favourite critters relish temperatures of a little over 30°C, laboratories routinely keep them at five or ten degrees below that.This is not in order to torture the beasts but, rather, because when kept warm they are unmanageably aggressive.The downside is that they have to eat more than they otherwise would, in order to keep their bodies warm.That changes their physiology. And that in turn alters the way they metabolise drugs, with possibly confusing results.Joseph Garner, of Stanford University, thinks the answer is to keep the labs cool, but let mice cope with the low temperatures as they do in their natural habitat: not by eating more but by building nests.So far, though, no one has a clear idea of how much nesting material is needed to keep mice happy.Dr Garner and his colleagues therefore decided to find out. They have just reported their results in the Public Library of Science.Dr Garner and his team let each of their mice, 36 males and as many females from three strains commonly used in trials, roam free in two cages connected by a narrow tube.
科技。动物实验。善待小鼠。它们可能会知恩图报。家，舒适的家。用实验动物试验成功的药物最终只有十分之一对人体起效。原因之一当然是：老鼠毕竟不是人。但另一个原因可能是，患病的实验动物无法像人类患者一样能够得到方方面面的呵护。虽然老鼠这种医学实验最喜欢使用的啮齿动物偏爱呆在稍高于30摄氏度的环境里，但实验室却常被控制在比这低5到10摄氏度的温度上。这并不是要存心虐待这些动物，而是因为当环境暖和了，它们会变得十分好斗，很难应付。而这样做的弊端是动物们为了保持体温，要比平常吃得更多。这样动物的生理机能就会有所改变，因此会影响到药物在动物体内的代谢，出来的实验结果也可能会很费解。斯坦福大学的约瑟・加纳（Joseph Garner）认为，解决办法就是令实验室保持低温，但让老鼠们像在自然环境中一样通过筑巢（而非吃得更多）来自行应对低温。不过至今都没有人清楚到底需要多少材料才能让老鼠们筑一个舒适的窝。于是约瑟・加纳博士及其同事决定要弄清这点，他们的实验结果刚刚发表在《公共科学图书馆》上。约瑟・加纳博士及其实验小组让所有老鼠（公鼠、母鼠各36只，属于三个常用于实验的品系）在两个由一条窄通道相连的笼子里自由活动。
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