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. 
Baqueiro-Espinosa, U., Donnelly, P., McEvoy, V. et al. 2024. The links between positive human interaction and maternal behaviour and welfare of commercial breeding dams (Canis familiaris). Applied Animal Behaviour Science 270, 106147.

In dogs, maternal behaviour plays an essential role in offspring survival and can influence the development and behaviour of the neonate later in life. We investigated the effect of prepartum enrichment on maternal behaviour and...

Robinson, L. M., Weiss, A. (Eds.) 2023. Nonhuman Primate Welfare: From History, Science, and Ethics to Practice. Springer, Cham, Switzerland. 671 p.

This volume reviews the broad topic of welfare in nonhuman primates under human care. Chapters detail the history of primates in captivity, ethical and legal issues surrounding the use of nonhuman primates as entertainment or...

Jorge, S., Félix, L., Costas, B. et al. 2023. Housing conditions affect adult zebrafish (Danio rerio) behavior but not their physiological status. Animals 13(6), 1120.

Zebrafish is a valuable model for neuroscience research, but the housing conditions to which it is exposed daily may be impairing its welfare status. The use of environmental enrichment and the refinement of methodology for...

Seck, M., Jobling, R., Brown, A. F. 2023. Trialling locally made, low-cost bits to improve bit-related welfare problems in cart horses: Findings from a study in Senegal. Animals 13(1), 2.

Bits used for cart horses in Senegal are typically made of recovered construction iron and often have defects related to design, shape, fit and metal quality. Consequently, there is widespread presence of bit-related oral injury...

Warwick, C., Pilny, A., Steedman, C. et al. 2023. Mobile zoos and other itinerant animal handling events: Current status and recommendations for future policies. Animals 13(2), 214.

Mobile zoos are events in which non-domesticated (exotic) and domesticated species are transported to venues such as schools, hospitals, parties, and community centres, for the purposes of education, entertainment, or social and therapeutic assistance. We...

Baqueiro-Espinosa, U., Lo, T. H., Hunter, R. et al. 2023. Positive human interaction improves welfare in commercial breeding dogs: Evidence from attention bias and human sociability tests. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 262, 105904.

Intensive breeding practices found in large scale Commercial Breeding Establishments (CBEs) raise significant concerns about breeding dam welfare. Large-scale CBE dams spend most of their reproductive lives confined to kennels, with limited access to enriching...

Gunter, L. M., Blade, E. M., Gilchrist, R. J. et al. 2023. The influence of brief outing and temporary fostering programs on shelter dog welfare. Animals 13(22), 3528.

Human interaction is one of the most consistently effective interventions that can improve the welfare of shelter-living dogs. Time out of the kennel with a person has been shown to reduce physiological measures of stress...

Menard, J., Bagheri, S., Menon, S. et al. 2023. Noninvasive sampling of the small intestinal chyme for microbiome, metabolome and antimicrobial resistance genes in dogs, a proof of concept. Animal Microbiome 5(1), 64.

Background The gastrointestinal microbiome and metabolome vary greatly throughout the different segments of the gastrointestinal tract, however current knowledge of gastrointestinal microbiome and metabolome in health and disease is limited to fecal samples due to...

Rexroat, E. K., Haughton, C. L., Fox, K. 2023. Using a cost-effective, efficient method to train young dogs to cooperate for multiple blood collection procedures in a pharmacokinetics study. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 11(6) (November/December), 34-36.

Behavioral testing slings, such as the Pavlov sling, offer an effective form of restraint for beagles while minimizing stress. Although these slings provide effective restraint, their high cost makes them less likely to be considered...

Alizadeh, E. A., Graf, K., Schiwon, J. et al. 2023. Thirty years of telemetry-based data acquisition for cardiovascular drug safety evaluation: Applications and optimization. Journal of Pharmacological and Toxicological Methods 122, 107279.

Conducting safety evaluations of new drugs using conscious animals has been a specialty of our working group for thirty years. In this article, we review the various technical challenges and solutions dealt with over the...

Lelláková, M., Pavľak, A., Lešková, L. et al. 2023. Monitoring blinks and eyelid twitches in horses to assess stress during the samples collection process. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 26(4), 530–539.

To assess stress in horses, a method of monitoring eye blinks (full and half) and eyelid twitches while collecting saliva and blood samples before and after annual intensive police training was carried out. This noninvasive...

Miller, S. L., Leri, F., Pushinsky, A. et al. 2023. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) distinguish between two human caretakers and their associated roles within a captive environment. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 267, 106053.

Zebrafish have become a popular biomedical model in recent decades, and are now maintained in laboratories worldwide. However, living within a captive environment can introduce novel environmental stressors and experiencing stress chronically can negatively affect...

Vidament, M., Bonneau, C., Lansade, L. 2023. Personality of equids: Donkeys and draught horses behave differently in fear and tactile sensitivity tests. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 269, 106113.

Horses and donkeys are used for agriculture, leisure, urban services and therapy. Although these two species obviously behave differently, it is important to measure their behavioural specificity when tested in the same situations and to...

Acharya, R. Y., Hemsworth, P. H., Coleman, G. J. et al. 2022. The animal-human interface in farm animal production: Animal fear, stress, reproduction and welfare. Animals 12(4), 487.

A negative human-animal relationship (HAR) from the perspective of the animal is a limiting factor affecting farm animal welfare, as well as farm animal productivity. Research in farm animals has elucidated sequential relationships between stockperson...

Jardat, P., Calandreau, L., Ferreira, V. et al. 2022. Pet-directed speech improves horses' attention toward humans. Scientific Reports 12(1), 4297.

In a recent experiment, we showed that horses are sensitive to pet-directed speech (PDS), a kind of speech used to talk to companion animals that is characterized by high pitch and wide pitch variations. When...

Knaebe, B., Weiss, C. C., Zimmermann, J. et al. 2022. The promise of behavioral tracking systems for advancing primate animal welfare. Animals 12(13), 1648.

Recent years have witnessed major advances in the ability of computerized systems to track the positions of animals as they move through large and unconstrained environments. These systems have so far been a great boon...

Svartberg, K. 2022. A possible basis for personality in dogs: Individual differences in affective predispositions. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 255, 105740.

Previously, dog personality traits that seem to correspond have been identified by the Dog Mentality Assessment (DMA) and the Behaviour and Personality Assessment in Dogs (BPH): Playfulness, Sociability, Curiosity/fearlessness (DMA) vs. Non-social fearfulness (BPH), Aggressiveness...

Marques Maia, C., Volpato, G. L., Braithwaite, V. A. 2022. A psychological aversive condition does not change individual zebrafish preference for background color or artificial plant enrichments. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 25(4), 427-438.

Information on fish preference for environmental conditions can be a useful tool to offer them what they want, an important requirement for welfare purposes. Giving that such an approach deals with psychological states of the...

Meers, L. L., Contalbrigo, L., Samuels, W. E. et al. 2022. Canine-assisted interventions and the relevance of welfare assessments for human health, and transmission of zoonosis: A literature review. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 9, 899889.

CAIs (canine-assisted interventions) include “canine-assisted therapy” in which a therapist sets client-oriented goals, “canine-assisted activities” with recreational goals for clients, and “canine-assisted education/learning” in which teachers or coaches create learning goals for students or clients...

Prentice, P. M., Houslay, T. M., Wilson, A. J. 2022. Exploiting animal personality to reduce chronic stress in captive fish populations. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 9, 1046205.

Chronic stress is a major source of welfare problems in many captive populations, including fishes. While we have long known that chronic stress effects arise from maladaptive expression of acute stress response pathways, predicting where...

Torgerson-White, L., Sánchez-Suárez, W. 2022. Looking beyond the shoal: Fish welfare as an individual attribute. Animals 12(19), 2592.

Welfare is an individual attribute. In general, providing captive nonhuman animals with conditions conducive to good welfare is an idea more easily applied when dealing with few individuals. However, this becomes much harder—if not impossible—under...

Tuozzi, A., Arhant, C., Anderle, K. et al. 2021. Effects of human presence and voice on the behaviour of shelter dogs and cats: A preliminary study. Animals 11(2), 406.

Reading books to shelter animals combining auditory enrichment with human presence is increasingly used although its effects on animal welfare have not yet been investigated. This study compared the behaviour of single-housed shelter dogs and...

Prior, H., Holbrook, M. 2021. Strategies to encourage the adoption of social housing during cardiovascular telemetry recordings in non-rodents. Journal of Pharmacological and Toxicological Methods 108, 106959.

The National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) is working with industry to promote social housing during cardiovascular telemetry recordings within non-rodent safety pharmacology and toxicology studies. Following surveys...

Sørensen, D., Cloutier, S., Gaskill, B. (Eds.). 2021. Animal-centric Care and Management - Enhancing Refinement in Biomedical Research. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.

The concept of the 3Rs (Refinement, Reduction and Replacement) has been used as a framework for improving the welfare of laboratory animals for the last half century. By establishing an animal-centric view on housing and...

Merkies, K., Franzin, O. 2021. Enhanced understanding of horse–human interactions to optimize welfare. Animals 11(5), 1347.

Horses (Equus caballus) have been domesticated for millennia and are regularly utilized for work, sport, and companionship. Enhanced understanding of human–horse interactions can create avenues to optimize their welfare. This review explores the current research...