• MeatPilot@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Dutch behavioral biologist Maarten 't Hart, hired by Herzog for his expertise with laboratory rats, revealed that, after witnessing the inhumane way in which the rats were treated, he no longer wished to cooperate. Apart from traveling conditions that were so poor that the rats, imported from Hungary, had started to eat each other upon arrival in the Netherlands, Herzog insisted the plain white rats be dyed gray. To do so, according to 't Hart, the cages containing the rats needed to be submerged in boiling water for several seconds, causing another half of them to die. The surviving rats proceeded to lick themselves clean of the dye immediately, as 't Hart had predicted they would.

    Holy shit.

    • drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      14 hours ago

      Goddamn

      I previously kinda liked Hertzog (he was amusing to listen to if nothing else), not any more.

      How do you boil 11,000 rats alive and then go on and make 10 minute long thinkpieces about the profound sadness of the death of a single penguin that leaves its flock? What a fucking masturbatory asshat.

    • brutalist@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      At what point do you just buy gray rats? Where in the cost benefit analysis does boiling rats in ink come in?

      • flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz
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        1 day ago

        I guess when buying 11000 rats you are somewhat constrained in your choice of color. It’s not like you can order them made in a custom color.

        • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          It’s not like they needed all 11000 of them. Half of them died from being submerged in boiling dye… Surely, it would have been easier with half a magnitude smaller quantity.

          • EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com
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            15 hours ago

            Half of them died from being submerged in boiling dye

            I’m surprised that half of them survived. Aside, that is cartoonishly evil.