An international group of prominent scientists has signed The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in which they are proclaiming their support for the idea that animals are conscious and aware to the degree that humans are -- a list of animals that includes all mammals, birds, and even the octopus.

Knowing that a midlife dip in happiness is a natural—and temporary—part of life could make it easier for humans to cope with the experience, Weiss said. It could also help caretakers improve captive apes' quality of life, by identifying ages at which the animals might benefit from extra attention or enrichment.

You may be thinking that the globs of gel you put in your hair doesn't come at a cost, but products that test on animals might be crueler than you realize. DoSomething.org asked Aryenish Birdie, Research Associate at Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, to dispel common myths about animal testing for cosmetics, household cleaners, and other products.

Even the US Federal Drug Administration confirms that nine out of ten drugs 'proven' successful in animal tests fail in human trials. This not only questions the efficacy and the fundamental argument for using animals, but critically raises the question about all the drugs that failed in animals which might have worked in humans. How many discarded cures for cancer?

In the past, much research has been based on animals because we didn't know any better. Today we are far more aware of the dangers of extrapolating from one species to another and we have scientific research methods — mass spectrometry, genome mapping, innovative imaging techniques and highly developed computer models capable of simulating parts of the human body as mathematical equations and three-dimensional graphical models, just to name a few more.

Terminally ill patients don't care whether a cancer drug works on a mouse, or that some disease can be cured in another species. Such claims only taunt them with false hope. These people need real cures based on real science — not misleading and antiquated animal experiments.

The pain that animals face every day for product testing, crude curiosity-driven experiments, and deadly medical training exercises are completely horrifying and indefensible. Animals are not disposable laboratory tools, they are individuals just like us who want to be free and don't want to be forced to endure lives of pain and terror. Take a look at the faces of animal testing and see why we should end experimentation on animals. More…