Notes

Our new Dog FAQ page provides answers to the most frequently asked questions about dogs in research.

Dogs (Canis familiars) belong to the family Canidae and are thought to be one of the first domesticated animals. They have been used in research for more than a century, however, they are currently very rarely used in animal research in Great Britain, only being used in 0.24% of experimental procedures in 2019 (latest published figures).

They are medium-sized mammals that can grow from 15 to 100 cm and weigh from 1.5 to 75 kg, depending on the type of dog. Dogs are carnivores but can thrive on a well-designed suitably processed omnivorous diet in the domestic situation.

Why are dogs used in research?
Dogs have been very useful research models for such a long time for many reasons. One of the reasons that dogs are physiologically quite similar to humans, they also have roughly the same number of genes as humans, and their genome has been sequenced. This makes dogs particularly useful in genetic studies. Dogs are also known to suffer from similar diseases as humans such as diabetes, epilepsy, autoimmune diseases, cancers, and eye diseases. Dogs can also be trained to cooperate in the research, learning to jump onto weighing benches and to accept muzzles in respiratory research for example. You can see this in this film about asthma drug research.