Refinement Database

Database on Refinement of Housing, Husbandry, Care, and Use of Animals in Research

This database, created in 2000, is updated every four months with newly published scientific articles, books, and other publications related to improving or safeguarding the welfare of animals used in research.

Tips for using the database:

  • This landing page displays all of the publications in the database.
  • Use the drop-down menus to filter these publications by Animal Type, Setting, and/or Topic.
  • Clicking on a parent category (e.g., Rodent) will include publications relating to all the items in that category (e.g., Chinchilla, Gerbil, Guinea Pig, etc.).
  • You may also add a keyword to further narrow your search.
  • Please note that at this time, only publications dated 2010 or later (with some exceptions) can be filtered by Animal Type and Topic, and only publications dated 2020 or later (with some exceptions) can be filtered by Setting. Most publications older than 2010 can only be searched by keyword. 
Reid, J., Nolan, A. M., Scott, E. M. 2018. Measuring pain in dogs and cats using structured behavioural observation. The Veterinary Journal 236, 72-79.

The contemporary approach to pain measurement in people and animals seeks to measure the affective (emotional) component of the pain experience using structured questionnaires with formal scoring methodology. Chronic pain has wide-ranging impacts which affects...

Zamansky, A., Bleuer-Elsner, S., Masson, S. et al. 2018. Effects of anxiety on canine movement in dog-robot interactions. Animal Behavior and Cognition 5(4), 380–387.

Canine behavioral disorders, such as various forms of fear and anxiety, are a major threat for the wellbeing of dogs and their owners. They are also the main cause for dog abandonment and relinquishment to...

Hawkins, P., McNeilly, A., Watson, J. et al. 2017. Report of the 2016 RSPCA/UFAW Rodent and Rabbit Welfare Group meeting. Animal Technology and Welfare 16(2), 77-86.

The RSPCA/UFAW Rodent (and now Rabbit) Welfare Group held a one-day meeting on 1 November 2016 at the University of Edinburgh and was attended by 70 delegates. Presentation topics included refinements in blood sampling rodents...

Elwood, R. W., Dalton, N., Riddell, G. 2017. Aversive responses by shore crabs to acetic acid but not to capsaicin. Behavioural Processes 140, 1-5.

Nociception is the ability to encode and perceive harmful stimuli and allows for a rapid reflexive withdrawal. In some species, nociception might be accompanied by a pain experience, which is a negative feeling that allows...

Sommerville, R., O’Connor, E. A., Asher, L. 2017. Why do dogs play? Function and welfare implications of play in the domestic dog. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 197, 1-8.

Play is an enigmatic behaviour, the function of which is still debated, despite more than a century of research. We discuss the evolutionary function of play behaviour, focusing on the domestic dog (Canis familiaris), a...

Schlüns, H., Welling, H., Federici, J. R. et al. 2017. The glass is not yet half empty: Agitation but not Varroa treatment causes cognitive bias in honey bees. Animal Cognition 20(2), 233–241.

Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are prone to judge an ambiguous stimulus negatively if they had been agitated through shaking which simulates a predator attack. Such a cognitive bias has been suggested to reflect an internal...

Owczarczak-Garstecka, S. C., Burman, O. H. P. 2016. Can sleep and resting behaviours be used as indicators of welfare in shelter dogs (Canis lupus familiaris)? PLOS ONE 11(10), e0163620.

Previous research on humans and animals suggests that the analysis of sleep patterns may reliably inform us about welfare status, but little research of this kind has been carried out for non-human animals in an...

Drude, N., Pawlowsky, K., Tanaka,H. et al. 2016. Severity assessment in rabbits after partial hepatectomy: Part II. Laboratory Animals 50(6), 468-475.

Although the recognition of pain, distress and discomfort has already been described in 1985 by Morton and Griffiths there is still very little known about the establishment of score sheets especially, regarding postsurgical pain and...

Wark, J. D., Amendolagine, L., Lukas, K. E. et al. 2016. Fecal glucocorticoid metabolite responses to management stressors and social change in four species of callitrichine monkeys. Primates 57(2), 267-277.

The use of enzyme immunoassays (EIA) for the non-invasive measurement of glucocorticoids provides a valuable tool for monitoring health and welfare in sensitive species. We validated methods for measuring fecal glucocorticoid metabolites (FGM) using the...

Hawkins, P., Atkinson, J., Birt, R. et al. 2016. Report of the 2015 RSPCA/UFAW rodent and rabbit welfare group meeting. Animal Technology and Welfare 15(1), 9-22. [Meeting Report]

The RSPCA/UFAW Rodent Welfare Group has held a one-day meeting every autumn for the last 21 years, so that its members can discuss current welfare research, exchange views on rodent welfare issues and share experiences...

Magee, B., Elwood, R. W. 2016. Trade-offs between predator avoidance and electric shock avoidance in hermit crabs demonstrate a non-reflexive response to noxious stimuli consistent with prediction of pain. Behavioural Processes 130, 31-35.

Arthropods have long been thought to respond to noxious stimuli by reflex reaction. One way of testing if this is true is to provide the animal with a way to avoid the stimulus but to...

Sullivan, K., Fairn, E., Adamo, S. A. 2016. Sickness behaviour in the cricket Gryllus texensis: Comparison with animals across phyla. Behavioural Processes 128, 134-143.

Immune activation alters behaviour (i.e. sickness behaviour) in animals across phyla and is thought to aid recovery from infection. Hypotheses regarding the adaptive function of different sickness behaviours (e.g. decreased movement and appetite) include the...

McEntee, D., Borg, K., Markiewicz, V. 2016. Establishment of a home-cage in vivo method of New Zealand white rabbit urine collection. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 4(4) (December), 44-46.

The most common methods for rabbit urine collection are newborn stroking, cystocentesis, and transfer to a metabolism cage.2 None of these options allow for a significant, quality amount of urine to be collected in vivo...

Caron, A., Lelong, C., Pascual, M. H. et al. 2015. Miniaturized blood sampling techniques to benefit reduction in mice and refinement in nonhuman primates: Application to bioanalysis in toxicity studies with antibody-drug conjugates. JAALAS 54(2), 145-152.

Minimizing the number of animals in regulatory toxicity studies while achieving study objectives to support the development of future medicines contributes to good scientific and ethical practices. Recent advances in technology have enabled the development...

Bakker, J., Ouwerling, B., Hedit, P. J. et al. 2015. Advantages and risks of housing changes to improve animal wellbeing in a breeding colony of common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus). JAALAS 54(3), 273-279.

Between 1975 and 2014, housing conditions for laboratory-housed marmosets changed dramatically after the introduction of new guidelines designed to improve their care and wellbeing. According to these guidelines, our facility provided marmosets with outside enclosures...

Cooke, G. M., Tonkins, B. M. 2015. Behavioural indicators of welfare exhibited by the common European cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis). Journal of Zoo and Aquarium Research 3(4), 157-162.

The common European cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) is frequently found in public aquaria in Europe. These remarkable creatures make fantastic display animals due to their rapid colour/texture/behaviour changes associated with feeding or camouflage. They possess extremely...

Pizzi, R., Dowling, A., Brown, D. et al. 2015. Facial thermography is not useful in assessing body temperature in common squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) in comparison to rectal temperatures. Journal of Zoo and Aquarium Research 3(3), 94-98.

A group of 39 captive common squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) had their body temperature measurements compared by rectal thermometry and facial infrared thermal imaging (Flir i3, Flir Systems Inc). Squirrel monkeys were caught up and...

Hall, L. E., Robinson, S., Buchanan-Smith, H. E. 2015. Refining dosing by oral gavage in the dog: A protocol to harmonise welfare. Journal of Pharmacological and Toxicological Methods 72, 35-46.

Introduction: The dog is a frequently-used, non-rodent species in the safety assessment of new chemical entities. We have a scientific and ethical obligation to ensure that the best quality of data is achieved from their...

Sneddon, L. U., Elwood, R. W., Adamo, S. A. et al. 2014. Defining and assessing animal pain. Animal Behaviour 97, 201-212.

The detection and assessment of pain in animals is crucial to improving their welfare in a variety of contexts in which humans are ethically or legally bound to do so. Thus clear standards to judge...

Burlingame, L. A., Na, J., Dunbar, M. et al. 2014. Behavioral ethogram as a health assessment tool in a feline vaccine study. American Association for Laboratory Animal Science [AALAS] Meeting Official Program, 610. (Abstract #P227).

For infectious disease studies, assessment of feline health is traditionally limited to metrics such as body temperature (BT), change in body weight (BW), and clinical signs (CS). Recently, behavioral ethograms designed for assessment of rabbits...

Kuhnea, F., Hlerb, J. C., Struweb, R. 2014. Emotions in dogs being petted by a familiar or unfamiliar person: Validating behavioural indicators of emotional states using heart rate variability. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 161, 113-120.

Although physical human–dog interactions have an important influence on the human–dog relationship, few studies have proposed the key factors of physical human–dog contact affecting the well-being of dogs. Therefore, our aim was to investigate the...

McGowan, R. T. S., Rehn, T., Norling, Y. et al. 2014. Positive affect and learning: Exploring the “Eureka Effect” in dogs. Animal Cognition 17(3), 577–587.

Animals may experience positive affective states in response to their own achievements. We investigated emotional responses to problem-solving in dogs, separating these from reactions to rewards per se using a yoked control design. We also...

Reinhardt, V. (ed.) 2013. Compassion Makes a Difference - Discussions by the Laboratory Animal Refinement & Enrichment Forum [LAREF], Volume III. Animal Welfare Institute, Washington, DC.

This is the third volume of discussions that took place on the Laboratory Animal Refinement & Enrichment Forum (LAREF). This forum is dedicated to the exchange of personal experiences of refining the conditions under which...

Lambeth, S. P., Schapiro, S. J., Bernacky, B. J. et al. 2013. Establishing 'quality of life' parameters using behavioural guidelines for humane euthanasia of captive non-human primates. Animal Welfare 22(4) 429-435.

Chronic pain and distress are universally accepted conditions that may adversely affect an animal’s quality of life (QOL) and lead to the humane euthanasia of an animal. At most research institutions and zoological parks in...

Savastano, G. M. 2013. Operant conditioning with laboratory beagles. American Association for Laboratory Animal Science [AALAS] Meeting Official Program, 619 (Abstract #PS57).

There is increased regulatory emphasis on positive reinforcement training for husbandry, research procedures, and restraint devices. We practice acclimation, association, and positive reinforcement training with our beagle colony with goals to reduce stress for dogs...