I used to hear about 'animal testing' of various products, going all the way back to the 1970s.

Comedian Chris Rush did a routine about testing drugs on laboratory animals... "They gave a little hamster a kilo of hashish... That's the same as a full-grown human smoking a joint the size of a coffee table! Then, the scientists wonder why the hamster won't run in his little wheel!..."

Needless to say, I don't like the idea of having animals test products that are made for humans. This unfortunate fauna include hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, mice, rats, and rhesus monkeys. "They've got a crappy union," Rush used to say about the latter.

Well, back in the 1990s, I'd rendered a doodle with one of these laboratory animals; in this case, it was a lab rat who was given a citrus soda to consume - to test the effects of its cyclamates (a sugar substitute) - directly from a 2-liter bottle. That's the equivalence of an adult human drinking the contents of 12-foot diameter above-ground swimming pool!

Paraphrasing Chris Rush's material, the scientists wonder why the rat won't run in his little maze. It isn't because he didn't get a 'sugar rush' from the artificial sweetener... He's just too fat and bloated to fit through the passageways of said maze!

(In RL, cyclamates were eventually banned because of its connection to cancer. Since then, additional 'sugar substitutes' have come out - including Sweet 'n' Low, Equal, Nutrasweet, and Splenda - each one with its own 'side effect' and/or disadvantage. I, personally, prefer Stevia - which comes from a plant, instead of being made in a laboratory.)

Here's hoping that lab animals will be a thing of the past, and that products for humans will only be tested by the humans themselves!