“…Donald’s work forms part of a recent growth in interest within geography and STS in the performativity and liveliness of the ‘little tools’ (Asdal, 2008) – such as ‘guidelines and handbooks, cultures of care, and licensing practices’ (Davies et al, 2018: 615) – which govern human-human and human–non-human relationships, including in biomedical and bioscientific settings. In exploring the history and evolution of principles governing animal research in laboratories, Gail Davies and colleagues nonetheless seek to counter assertions that ‘spatial and social divisions of labor simply separate practices of caring from the epistemic practices of science’ (Davies et al, 2018: 610); rather, ethnographic work has shown how practices of science and practices of care are mutually constitutive (Bellacasa, 2017; Friese et al, 2019) and, as such, ‘animal care is a crucial part of producing a scientific fact’ (Nuyts and Friese, 2021: 17). Like Donald (2019), Davies et al (2018: 608) and the contributors to their special issue of Science, Technology and Human Values collectively explore how ‘personal capacities to care are articulated in and through complex encounters – not only with animals and infrastructures but also with an immense range of legal requirements and regulatory guidance’ – elements of scientific practice which have been largely absent from laboratory ethnographies.…”