Rat Strangulation Horror Prompts PETA, Alliance for HOPE Call for Charges Against Monash University

For Immediate Release:
July 22, 2025

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

In a joint letter sent today, PETA U.S., PETA Australia, and Alliance for HOPE International urge Animal Welfare Victoria to investigate and take appropriate legal action against Monash University after a second report was released detailing domestic violence experiments on rats that appear to violate the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1986 and Australia’s standards for replacing animal use with non-animal methods.

In the just-uncovered test, Monash University experimenters dropped weights on pregnant rats’ heads, causing severe eye injuries and likely brain damage. The rats did not receive adequate pain relief for the head trauma, and some were separately subjected to strangulation. All the animals were killed.

Joint follow-up letters were also sent to the National Health and Medical Research Council, and Monash University to address their inadequate responses to our concerns regarding the permitting and conduct of these experiments, as well as a joint letter to Elsevier urging retractions of these publications. 

This is not the first time Monash University experimenters have used extreme violence. In March, PETA called out university experimenters who strangled or bashed in the heads of 78 out of 109 adolescent female rats. After public outcry, Monash attempted to downplay its severity, prompting a detailed rebuttal from PETA.

“Bashing animals in the head and strangling them is an atrocity that will reveal nothing about domestic violence,” says PETA U.S. Vice President Shalin Gala. “PETA urges Animal Welfare Victoria to launch a formal investigation and for the National Health and Medical Research Council to stop funding these sadistic and unscientific experiments.”

Both tests supposedly simulated the effects of domestic violence on humans, but significant cognitive and physiological differences between rats and humans render the test useless because each species manifests trauma in vastly different ways.

PETA asks supporters to urge Animal Welfare Victoria to investigate Monash University for apparent violations of animal protection laws and to ensure Victoria’s new animal legislation prohibits violent human abuse scenarios in experiments on animals.

Rats are intelligent and highly social. They become attached to each other and easily bond with their human guardians, returning as much affection as is given to them.

San Diego, California-based Alliance for HOPE International is a U.S. nonprofit that works to assist domestic violence survivors. It created the world’s leading training and outreach organization on the handling of fatal and non-fatal strangulation assaults.

PETA U.S.—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 U.S. on X, Facebook, or Instagram.