Cancel LSU’s $1M Grant, PETA Tells Feds After University Forced to Release Public Videos
For Immediate Release:
February 28, 2025
Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382
PETA today released video footage from inside the wild bird laboratory of Louisiana State University (LSU) experimenter Christine Lattin after the university was ordered to release the video following PETA’s successful public records lawsuit. PETA’s suit prevailed before the trial court, an intermediate appellate court and the state Supreme Court, and today PETA calls on the National Science Foundation (NSF) to cancel the $1 million grant funding these experiments. The agency reportedly went beyond the staff cuts demanded by the Trump administration and fired 10 percent of its staff, so PETA’s request is simple: If there are to be cuts, the NSF should terminate the massive grant funding Lattin’s wasteful and pointless project.
Lattin captures panicked sparrows from nature and, as the video the university fought to keep secret reveals, holds them in barren cages inside what looks like a broom closet. Her students frighten the birds by putting foreign objects near their food, such as cocktail umbrellas, and observe them to see if they will overcome their fear in order to eat. Birds sometimes escape inside the small room, and students frantically struggle to recapture them. The artificial stressors used in the lab don’t reflect real-world ecological challenges, and the birds’ stress during capture and confinement makes Lattin’s data unreliable.
PETA sued LSU and won after the school failed to produce the videos and documents related to Lattin’s experiments that PETA requested. The Louisiana Supreme Court ordered LSU to turn over the records, which detail backroom dealings between Lattin, her attorney, and a member of the Baton Rouge city council, which she convinced to change the city’s bird-protection ordinance to allow trapping wild birds for experimentation—something that had been illegal.
Birds in Lattin’s clutches may suffer from depression, severe lethargy, inability to perch, unkempt feathers, hunched posture, weight loss, and more, according to her protocol, which PETA obtained separately from a state agency.
“Christine Lattin’s experiments are more about getting grants to torment birds than about science,” says PETA Vice President Dr. Alka Chandna. “The National Science Foundation surely has better use for its funds than scaring sparrows with cocktail umbrellas.”
House sparrows typically form monogamous pairs and tend to gather in noisy flocks, constantly chirping to communicate. In Lattin’s laboratory, experimenters cut open birds’ skulls and inject their brains with chemicals. They snatch baby birds from their nests, keep them hungry, draw blood, and restrain them in bags for hours. They put two males in a cage with one food dish, forcing them to fight for food. Sparse records of the birds’ care also include unexplained references to blood in cages and reveal that most of the birds in Lattin’s laboratory are killed.
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.
