Is this animal experience?

[p24]

I am volunteering for a professor in the department of animal biosciences where i work in their lab.  They are not a dvm so it is not vet experience.  Is this animal experience if I help with their animal related research?  I was just unsure if animal experience means direct contact with animals or anything relating to animals. Thank you.

[MustLoveCows]

If you are working directly with animals (i.e. going to collect data at a farm) I would count this as animal experience (just because you aren't working in a barn or stable doesn't mean its not animal experience!). If you are working with tissues or other types of samples performing analysis in the lab I wouldn't say this is animal experience.

[oncovet]

As stipulated on the OVC admissions website, animal experience is described as: "Animal experience includes working with livestock, breeding/showing various species, working in a pet store, equestrian activities and any other animal related hobby/experience where a veterinarian is not always present, or does not supervise you. Animal experience does not include pet ownership or college/university courses that involve animals. Animals are defined as vertebrates for this purpose."

So yes it would count as animal experience since it is animal related, "any other animal related hobby/experience where a veterinarian is not always present, or does not supervise you".

[Squirrelly]

I would say that this is not animal experience. In one particular case I volunteered for a PhD student to help sort her long-term data on wild sparrows. Yeah, her data pertains to animals - but I was not out tagging or restraining the sparrows directly, so there is no way I would consider it animal experience.

It's quite simple, really. Does your volunteer placement revolve around working with animals in the lab, or just animal data/samples?

If not animal experience, it would still make for a great extracurricular!