A Legal Leg Up for Octopuses by Katherine A. Meyer I’M PRETTY SURE that if I asked my 3-year-old niece if an octopus is an animal, she would unhesitatingly say, “Yes!” So why is it that the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which doles out tens of millions of taxpayer dollars every year for research on animals—including experiments on cephalopods, which include octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish—does not consider these creatures to be “animals” regarding the agency’s requirement that those used in federally funded research be treated “humanely”? Two federal laws generally govern the way animals used in research must be cared for. The first is the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), passed in 1966, which requires the U.S. Department of Agriculture to establish standards for the “humane treatment” of all animals used in research. The statute defines “animal” to include only certain “warm-blooded”
animals, so cephalopods are not covered. Changing the statutory definition would require an act of Congress—not something easily accomplished on any front these days. The second law is the Health Research Extension Act of 1985, which does not contain a definition of “animal,” but provides that the NIH shall establish guidelines for “[t]he proper care and treatment
OCTOPUSES ARE
EXTREMELY INTELLIGENT ANIMALS
WHO REACT TO PAIN
8 2022 OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND: AQUATIC ANIMALS UNDER SIEGE
of animals used in biomedical and behavioral research,” and also conditions federally funded research grants on the “assurance” that such guidelines are being met. Thus, technically octopuses are already included within the breadth of that existing statute because clearly they are animals (as opposed to plants or inanimate objects), and are used in biomedical and behavioral research. In fact, more than 3,000 cephalopods are currently held for research purposes at the Woods Hole Marine Biology Laboratory in Massachusetts alone. Yet, the NIH has adopted a Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals that further defines the term “animal” to be limited to “vertebrates.” So although cephalopods (particularly octopuses) are increasingly being used in large numbers for research on the brain, nervous system, eyes, and for behavioral research, they need not be