A necessary evil? What you need to know about animal research

Every year, millions of animals are used in scientific research across the UK. Statistics suggest that almost four million scientific procedures were carried out on animals in 2016 alone. The majority of these were reported to be on mice (73%), followed by fish (14%), rats (6%) and birds (4%). The remaining proportion was made up of other species including horses and other equines (0.23%), dogs (0.13%), primates (0.09%) and cats (0.004%).