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Louisiana State University (LSU) experimenter Christine Lattin is planning to trap house sparrows in their habitat and cage them in her Baton Rouge laboratory, where she’ll inject their brains with chemicals to temporarily stop activity in part of the brain. She’ll then expose the brain-damaged sparrows to unfamiliar objects that may frighten them, just to see how they react. When she’s done, she’ll kill them and chop up their brains.

This isn’t Lattin’s first time terrorizing birds for “science.” In previous experiments concerning neophobia, or the fear of new things, she imprisoned birds and deprived them of food for up to 15 hours to make them so desperate for food that they would approach unfamiliar objects. Even though they were famished, many birds were reluctant to eat. Now, she’s planning to kidnap sparrows and do similar experiments on them. After potentially months of holding them in stressful captivity, she’ll kill every bird in her laboratory.
Birds deserve to fly free, live in their nests, and care for their families—not be traumatized by experimenters. Lattin claims that her experiments reveal how animals respond to stressors, but different species react to stress in different ways. She wants to record wild sparrows’ natural responses to stressors, but she plans to lock them up in unnatural environments, which could change their behavior.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has actually awarded her a $1 million grant—even though these experiments are cruel and unnecessary.
Tell NSF to STOP funding them now!