wow terrific discussion!
The experimenters replied to my email. They were using redundant mice which were breeded in a lab. It is standard routine that these redundant mice are killed. If one participant of the study decides not to have his / her mouse killed the experimenters buy it from the lab and let it live till it’s natural death. Thus no mouse was killed that wouldn’t have been killed anyway but depending on the decisions of the participants some mice lived that would have been killed otherwise.
Makes sense, and it really is a fascinating study. I would love to hear the results of this (or similar) studies, I'm really nor sure what I would expect for the percent of people killing the mice for money.
Of course when I googled "study killing mice for money", this thread is the first link listed... Couldn't find anything else by searching, though I'd assume something like this has been done before.
