testing
Explanation
The Joke
A student approaches a professor'''s desk and asks: "Professor, before we start, do you believe in testing on animals for non-medical applications?" The professor replies: "Absolutely not. Why?" The caption reads: "I managed to get exempted from my bio-ethics exam."
The Humor
The joke hinges on a clever double meaning of "testing on animals." The student asks whether the professor believes in "testing on animals for non-medical applications," which sounds like a serious ethical question about animal experimentation in research. The professor, interpreting it as a question about animal welfare, firmly says no. But the student was actually asking about academic testing -- i.e., giving exams to animals (or in this case, to a human being, since humans are technically animals). By getting the professor to declare opposition to "testing on animals for non-medical purposes," the student has tricked her into stating that she opposes giving a bio-ethics exam (a non-medical test) to an animal (the student, a human animal). The irony is delicious: a bio-ethics professor has been outsmarted by a student using the very kind of careful definitional reasoning that bio-ethics courses teach.