Would you adopt a lab animal?

Six years ago, Mallory Cormier adopted a three-month-old New Zealand white rabbit with ears as long as celery stalks and a mohawk-like cowlick on his forehead. Cormier named him Chickpea, and when she moved him from a temporary dog crate to a larger pen in her living room, he began leaping from one side of the enclosure to the other, enjoying a freedom he’d never known.

Chickpea, like millions of other animals in the U.S., began his life in a research lab. An acquaintance of Cormier’s worked in that lab, and told her that the young rabbit would be euthanized because of a leg injury. Instead, Cormier took him home.

Now, Cormier delights in watching the rabbit jumping to his heart's content. “At the lab, his housing allowed him to turn around and lie down, but it wasn’t tall enough for him to jump,” says Cormier, who works in veterinary medicine in Connecticut. “Seeing him finally move freely was incredible.”

Animals used in scientific experiments live lives largely unseen, hidden from the public behind laboratory doors. By one estimate, more than 100 million animals—mice and rats make up the vast majority—are used each year for research in the U.S. Among these, according to United States Department of Agriculture reports for 2024, are more than 12,000 cats, 40,000 dogs, and 100,000 primates.

Nearly all lab animals are killed at the end of studies so that scientists can examine their organs and tissues and collect data. But others—those subjected to minimally  invasive studies, kept as breeders, or used in control groups—sometimes have a second chance at life. 

I shared a decade with one of these animals, starting in 2013, when I adopted a beagle who’d spent nearly four years in a lab in Virginia. I knew nothing else about Hammy’s past, but we bonded quickly and I worked hard to make him feel safe and comfortable in our Washington, DC home. As I watched Hammy find his footing in a world beyond the confinement he once knew, I began to wonder about other lab animals. Why aren’t more adopted? Are there organizations working to find them new homes? And just how hard is it for other species to transition from subject to pet?

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Not just lab dogs

Historically, some universities have allowed lab animals to be adopted by staff, students, and neighbors. In the last 12 years, 17 U.S. states passed laws requiring labs to make healthy dogs and cats available for adoption after testing is completed. And in 2022, more than 4,000 beagles were adopted by families across the country after Envigo RMS, a research breeding facility in Virginia, shut its operation (this came after the United States sued the company, alleging animal welfare violations). For the last few years, Kindness Ranch, a Wyoming sanctuary for former research animals, has found homes for an average of 250 beagles, and a third as many cats, each year.

But traditional companion animals aren’t the only ones living new lives outside of labs. Among the 130 non-human residents of Kindness Ranch are llamas, horses, cows, goats, sheep and pigs, most of whom were used in veterinary training or nutrition studies. Other sanctuaries, including Peaceable Primate Sanctuary in Indiana and Project Chimps in Georgia, provide homes for former research primates. (While the U.S. National Institutes of Health stopped funding biomedical research on chimpanzees in 2015, many remain in labs, awaiting sanctuary homes.)

Labs have found post-research homes for ferrets, chinchillas, skinks, voles, fish, birds, and even tarantulas. Veterinarians and animal technicians in labs say knowing that their charges—some of whom they grow attached to—get to live out their lives in homes boosts morale in a line of work that can be stressful, even traumatic. 

One of the greatest challenges among those working to rehome former research animals is earning the trust of science institution staff, who want to avoid inviting attention to their animal research operations. That’s less of an issue when the person coordinating the adoptions is on the inside.

'Retirement, not disposal'

Holly Nguyen has a degree in zoology and is a prostate cancer researcher at the University of Washington. Over the years, Nguyen has seen many potentially adoptable lab animals—especially rats and mice—killed at the end of studies. 

“I had an issue with this, like many people,” she says. “And I decided to do something about it.” She founded Washington Adoption Center for Retired Research Animals (WACRRA) and in August 2024 adopted out her first critters, a pair of 1-year-old rats named Fritz and Ernst. 

A family halfway across Washington state adopted these rodent littermates. “I thought they’d be perfect for my boys, who were 3 and 5,” says Elizabeth Hamilton. She appreciates Nguyen's efforts to create a new standard practice for lab animals: what Hamilton calls “retirement, not disposal.”

Hamilton’s family quickly learned that the rats were curious, smart and sweet—and had their own unique personalities. Sadly, Fritz died less than a year later; he now has a special place in their backyard. 

WACRRA has partnerships with six institutions in the Seattle area, whose staff contact Nguyen when they have adoptable animals. As part of the arrangement, she agrees to keep confidential the names of the institutions. So far she’s found homes for around 400 mice, rats, hamsters, guinea pigs, and ferrets and has adopted one herself, a Syrian hamster named Marble, who was used in vision research.

“I have a couple rooms in my house dedicated to fostering these animals, with species-specific habitats,” Nguyen says. She often finds free supplies and housing through her local buy-nothing group, and the labs donate the animals’ food. Nguyen enjoys seeing the adoptees have room to explore, dig in deep bedding and swing in hammocks. She hopes to expand her reach beyond the Pacific Northwest and believes it’s important to have groups like hers dedicated to these efforts.

“Everyone adores the mission and they feel really good about being able to give these animals a life outside the lab,” she says.

In Virginia, Eva Cross runs Second Chance Heroes Rat Adoptions. Among the 800 rats she’s rehomed, more than 100 have been from labs, some as far away as Wisconsin. “People want to adopt former lab animals,” says Cross. “I think it’s maybe less known that rats can be good pets and companions.” 

In some cases, adopted lab animals still contribute to science. Soon after starting her nonprofit six years ago, Cross re-read The Lab Rat Chronicles by Kelly Lambert, a professor at the University of Richmond who studies positive emotions in rats to learn about human behavior. Cross reached out to Lambert, and they began a conversation that led to rehoming 18 young rats through Second Chance Heroes in 2024. Lambert and her team were eager to learn how her subjects fared in homes, so they began surveying adopters periodically about each rat’s diet, weight, temperament, personality, socialization, and preferred activities. This “citizen science” effort allows research to continue while the rats live in a more comfortable, non-clinical environment. 

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Adjusting to a new life

The ease of transition to home life depends on an animal’s age, personality, and experience in the lab. Younger animals generally acclimate faster to new environments. Those who were poked and prodded and who didn’t receive much, if any, individual attention, might have a harder time relaxing, trusting, and adapting. And just like humans, some animals are more adventurous and love new experiences while others are more fearful.

Cross says that no matter the lab animal’s background, it’s important to transition them to a home slowly. “This is a whole new world for them,” she says. “Every experience they’re having is something they’ve never had before. Patience will help them more than anything.”

Living in DC with me, my beagle Hammy was scared of many everyday sounds and sights for most of his first year out of the lab. But during our 10 years together, he became braver and more self-assured (as did I). I grew to know him as an individual and did my best to let him make decisions about how to interact, where to sleep, and when to eat—which was, in true beagle fashion, as often as possible.

As for Cormier’s rabbit Chickpea—known now as Chickie— he has become quite territorial and a bit of a “guard dog,” Cormier says, waking her at night when he hears sounds outdoors. He loves salad and expresses his dislikes with grunts, like when Cormier wore fluffy socks around him. He’s on the smaller side, just 8 pounds, but his legacy is large: He inspired Cormier to start Save the Buns, a nonprofit that partners with local laboratories to rehome research bunnies.

Cormier has now brought 17 rabbits out of research, including a second one that is now her pet, named Crouton. Seven of the bunnies live in a small, heated barn on Cormier’s property. There, waiting to be adopted, they have fleece blankets, cardboard tunnels, daily salads, dried apple snacks, and unlimited hay. Sunlight streams in from multiple windows, and relaxing music plays throughout the day. And there in the barn, they have room to leap.