Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 experiments licensed under the 1986 Act. The 1986 Act defined "regulated procedures" as animal experiments that could potentially cause "pain, suffering, distress or lasting harm", to "protected animals", which encompassed all living vertebrates other than humans, under the responsibility of humans. A 1993 amendment added a single invertebrate species, the common octopus ("Octopus vulgaris"), as a protected animal. The Act applied only to protected animals from halfway through their gestation or incubation periods (for mammals, birds and reptiles) or from when they became capable of independent feeding (for fish, amphibians and, the common octopuses). Primates, cats, dogs and horses had
Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals animals in hauling carriages, scientific experiments (including vivisection), and cultural amusements of fox-hunting, bull-baiting and cock-fighting were among some of the matters that were debated by social reformers, clergy, and parliamentarians. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was an unsuccessful attempt by William Johnstone Pulteney on 18 April 1800 to pass legislation through England's Parliament to ban the practice of bull-baiting. In 1809 Lord Erskine (1750–1823) introduced an anti-cruelty bill which was passed in the House of Lords but was defeated in a vote in the House of Commons. Erskine in his parliamentary speech combined the vocabulary of