The use of animals in teaching situations is one of the methods of animal experimentation that has been institutionalized in the scientific context of the eighteenth century, when it was believed that animals had no soul or feel pain. Today, new knowledge about the physiology of animals brought to the ethical implications of the scientific experiments on animals, they show that the basic model of organization of the nervous system of humans and vertebrate animals is qualitatively the same. This study aimed to investigate the conceptions of Biological Sciences and Biomedicine students at a federal institution of higher education in the State of Rio de Janeiro on the use of animals in teaching situations during graduation. The results show that the university community remains hostage to the vivisectionist paradigm when the use of animals is recurrent and unjustifiable, and teachers and students are unaware of the ethical and legal implications of the use of animals in teaching situations during science education.