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Since the 1930’s, rabbits are widely used for experimentation and testing mainly due to practical, rather than scientific, considerations. They are small and usually docile, easily restrained, cheap to maintain, and breed prodigiously.
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In 1933, Richard Shope discovers a papillomavirus in the horns of cottontail Rabbits.
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In 1937, Dr. Shope observes that Rabbits overcome CRPV are immune to re-infection.
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In 1944, the Draize test was invented as a way to test skin and eye irritancy of chemicals. In these tests, rabbits are often locked into full-body restraints to prevent them from touching eye or skin sores.
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This controversial use of rabbits resulted in some of the first large-scale protests against animal experimentation in the 1970s and 1980s and pushed the scientific community to search for in vitro alternatives.
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Although their numbers have declined over the past two decades, 205,482 rabbits were held in laboratories in 2012.
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They are also frequently used in experiments that cause pain and suffering. In 2012, over 35%, or 77,206 individual rabbits were subjected to these types of tests.
