I used to hang with some behavioral psychology grad students (the type that follow the practices of B.F. Skinner and operant conditioning) who were researching the effects of various drugs on pigeons. We were drinking in their lab one time and there were about thirty white pitchers sitting on a table; eventually I noticed that they all had little white, twitching tails sticking out of them - each one contained a pigeon face-down waiting to be put into the testing chamber. I asked them how they managed to get the pigeons into the pitchers and keep them there and they just laughed. They took me into the cage room and showed me how they just opened the cage door and held up a pitcher and the bird would fly like a rocket straight into it. Sometimes they went in so hard they would knock themselves unconscious.

There are some obvious ethical issues with animal experimentation, but as a certified druggie myself their lives didn’t seem all that bad.