ABSTRACT
The above account of beagles’ value to experimental science comes from a researcher based at the first large-scale experimental beagle colony at the University of California, Davis (1951-1986). The quotation is indicative of the messy combination of cultural and scientific factors that led to the animals’ consolidation as the standard laboratory dog and makes evident that the animals’ affective qualities – their ‘excellent disposition’ and ‘gay personality’ – lie at the core of their experimental value. The tight link between affect and epistemology has been noted in previous research about laboratory dogs (e.g. Dror 1999, Degeling 2008), with dogs in general focused on in a large body of cultural research, due to drawing together issues including the historical standardization of laboratory animals (Kirk 2010); connections between veterinary and medical research (Bresalier et al. 2015); and ethical debates surrounding animal research (Lederer 1992). These latter concerns are brought to the fore when focusing on beagles specifically, due to the breed’s affective qualities being so closely aligned with beagles’ consolidation as the standard laboratory dog. Davis, moreover, is a privileged site through which to explore the standardization of beagles; although the breed had been used in research prior to the 1950s, the experiments at Davis consolidated their use (Thompson 1989). As researchers involved with the project noted: ‘the many arguments that can now be advanced for the use of this animal were unknown, or at least unsupported, when the decision to employ beagles in these experiments was made in 1950’ (Thompson 1989, p. 25). In addition to the breed’s specific qualities, the scale of these experiments at Davis resulted in the ‘continued use of the beagle in subsequent experiments’ due to the need for ‘intercomparing data in the same animal model’ (Thompson 1989, p. 25). Research generated at Davis continues to inform the contemporary management of laboratory beagles (Tomkins et al. 2011), with beagles acting as the standard dog for use in laboratory work in a range of contexts (Joint Working Group on Refinement 2004),
and contemporary licensing standards (which prescribe the amount of space and levels of social interaction required for dogs) based on the needs of beagles (e.g. EU 2010).
