Question: Is it fun working with animals?

Ruth Hamill answered on 9 Nov 2015:

It is fun, unpredictable at times, but it is a privilege to work with animals, and they deserve respect and good care. When you do population genetics, you need access to large numbers of animals in order that your work is representative of the population. When working with wild species much as possible, we tried to sample non-invasively causing minimal harm e.g. plucking hair follicles for DNA. Most of the animals we study in meat quality research are part of the food chain and usually we only sample post-mortem from the carcass.