Isolating and Intoxicating Mice Won’t Help Lonely Males Stop Drinking: PETA Statement

For Immediate Release:
August 27, 2026

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Chief Scientist Dr. Katherine Roe regarding a newly published Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Northwestern University experiment, funded by the National Institutes of Health, that involved cutting open mice’s skulls, injecting viruses into their brains, giving them alcohol, confining some alone for up to 16 days, and forcing them through stressful behavioral tests before decapitating and dissecting them, purportedly to study loneliness and substance use. Experimenters also subjected the mice to “tube dominance tests,” in which mice are placed at opposite ends of a narrow tube, forcing one to retreat, and “resident-intruder tests,” in which young mice are placed in cages with another unfamiliar mouse, often causing them to fight.

Forcing mice to face off in tubes after cutting open their heads, jamming devices into their brains, locking them in solitary confinement, and encouraging them to drink alcohol is as scientific as consulting a crystal ball. Decades of experiments on animals have failed to shed meaningful light on alcohol abuse, and attempting to mimic complex human experiences with booze and crude dominance contests makes a mockery of science. PETA urges the National Institutes of Health to stop paying for this cruel nonsense and instead fund human-relevant, animal-free research outlined in PETA’s Research Modernization NOW that can lead to effective treatments for humans.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.