Texas Tech researcher could have sat on ant hill
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1999:
PETA in mid-February disclosed a
$120,000 Texas Tech project in which deer were
compelled to give birth in pens full of fire ants, to
see whether fawns exposed to the ants survive, and
anesthetized day-old bobwhite quail chicks were covered
with fire ants. In each experiment the object was
to see whether the ants did the animals more harm
than exposure to the pesticides most often used to kill
fire ants; other fawns and quail were exposed to the
pesticides but not the ants.
As it turned out, the fire ants did not kill
any fawns––but eight of the 25 pregnant deer who
were net-gunned from a helicopter in May 1998 by
researcher Mark Wallace died from capture stress,
and another doe died of injuries suffered in capture.
Eight of the 26 fawns born during the
experiments were either stillborn or were euthanized
because they were judged unlikely to live.