Name: Schism, also known as 'Number Five'.
Species: Norway rat, black self variety
Age: 5 months
Weight: 500 grams
Birthplace: University of Iowa
Eye colour: black
Markings: Completely black, his paws are grey with pink toes which make him look like he's wearing fingerless gloves.

Extras: Schism has several needles which protrude from his head. His ears are virtually non existent but there are small stubs of them left. He has a small metal ring on his left hind leg with his laboratory ID on it as he has no ears to put a tag in. His eyes are very small and black and he has no whiskers.

General: Schism is an ex laboratory rat, his allocated number was Five. He was used in pain endurance tests and, as such, was subject to many unpleasant procedures. The needles in his head are one such example. He is unable to remove them due to him escaping the lab before they could be taken out and scar tissue growing over them. His ears were cut off with scissors and his eyes were sewn shut for a period. His whiskers were also removed. Schism lives in a world of sensory deprivation as a result of the tortures he endured. He cannot speak and his hearing and eye-sight is extremely bad. He is in constant pain and had he remained at the lab he would have been euthanized.

It is hard to get close to Schism either physically or emotionally. The needles mean he has unwittingly damaged others and his inability to speak means he has limited communication methods. Despite this, he is a sweet rat and shows obvious distress when he inadvertently hurts others. He tends to try and avoid confrontation and is actually rather shy and timid. He tends to spend a lot of time sleeping and he doesn't eat much, it is assumed both of these things are results of the amount of pain he is in. However, he has been known to grind his teeth in apparent joy at certain things so he is able to feel happiness to a degree.
I suppose Schism is my most dramatic and blatant 'fuck you' to animal experimentation. I'm opposed to testing on animals for any reason due to the obvious suffering it causes them. However, there is also a huge human death toll due to drugs being shown as safe for use on animals but which later proved lethal to people. There is no longer a need to test on animals for either drugs or cosmetics. People have accused me of being excessive and unrealistic with Schism's back-story but what they do not realise is that I did not make up most of the things which happened to him. Rats have had their whiskers, ears and eyes removed in laboratories. After this point, I stopped researching :/