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. 
Martin, A. L. 2017. Theprimatologist as a behavioral engineer. American Journal of Primatology 79, e22500.

The field of primate behavior management has had only limited success in preventing and treating abnormal behaviors, such as stereotypy and self‐injury, in captive non‐human primates (NHP). In contrast, applied behavior analysts have had great...

Polissidis, A., Zelelak, S., Nikita, M. et al. 2017. Assessing the exploratory and anxiety-related behaviors of mice. Do different caging systems affect the outcome of behavioral tests? Physiology & Behavior 177, 68-73.

Ample studies have shown that housing can affect the health, welfare and behavior of mice and therefore, the outcomes of certain experiments. The aim of this study was to investigate if three widely used housing...

Barker, T. H., Bobrovskaya, L., Howarth, G. S. et al. 2017. Female rats display fewer optimistic responses in a judgment bias test in the absence of a physiological stress response. Physiology & Behavior 173, 124-131.

Metabolic cages are a type of housing used in biomedical research. Metabolic cage housing has been demonstrated to elicit behavioural and physiological changes in rodents housed within them. The nature of this effect has been...

Kleefeld, S., Bannerton, K., Kelly, J.2017. Effect of moderate environmental enrichment on commonly used behavioural tests in rats. Animal Technology and Welfare 16(1), 75-76.

The environment that laboratory animals are housed in should reflect their natural habitats in a manner that can satisfy their innate physiological and behavioural needs. This includes nest building, hiding, exploring and foraging. Providing environmental...

Jones, T., Robinson, M., Leach, M. et al. 2017. Ultrasonic vocalisation as a measure of positive welfare in rats. Animal Technology and Welfare 16(2), 127-129.

Studies of animal welfare in laboratory animals have historically relied on the measurement of negative indicators rather than the assessment of positive indicators of welfare. Practical methods of welfare assessment are required to allow refinement...

Holmes, J., Waters, D., Maisonave, I. et al. 2017. Social interaction for non-sibling pregnant New Zealand white rabbits on reproductive toxicology. Animal Technology and Welfare 16(2), 139-141.

Rabbits are gregarious animals that live in social groups in the wild so individually housing our animals, while meeting the present scientific objectives, restricts their natural social behaviour. How to meet the social needs of...

Pasquarelli, N., Voehringer, P., Henke, J. et al. 2017. Effect of a change in housing conditions on body weight, behavior and brain neurotransmitters in male C57BL/6J mice. Behavioural Brain Research 333, 35-42.

The development of modern housing regimes such as individually ventilated cage (IVC) systems has become very popular and attractive in order to reduce spreading of pathogenic organisms and to lower the risk to develop a...

Zomeño, C., Birolo, M., Zuffellato, A. et al. 2017. Aggressiveness in group-housed rabbit does: Influence of group size and pen characteristics. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 194, 79-85.

The aim of this work was to study how the group size and the number of doorways in a pen may influence the aggressive interactions throughout the reproductive cycle among does kept in a part-time...

Li, S.-R., Hao, X., Bi, J.-H. et al. 2017. Why do female desert lizards construct burrows to lay eggs? Behaviour 154(9/10), 1051–1068.

Many oviparous animals construct well-designed nests to provide relatively favourable conditions for their eggs and hatchlings, but the direct evidence that nest structure can determine their reproductive success is insufficient. In the present study, we...

Cooke, G. M. 2017. Stereotypic behavior is not limited to terrestrial taxa: A response to Rose et al. Journal of Veterinary Behavior 22, 17-18.

This comment is in response to a recent review of stereotypical behavior in captive exotic animals (Rose et al., 2017). Negative stereotypical behavior occurs across most if not all taxa, including notable aquatic invertebrates. A...

Knapek, K. J., Adams, M. K., Ayers, J. D. 2017. What’s in our chamber of secrets? Python housing in a laboratory setting. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 5(4) (December), 16-19.

At Colorado State University we have an investigator who requested care for 2 different species of pythons, the green tree python (Morelia viridis) and the ball python (Python reguis), to study the pathology of an...

Tucker, R. D. 2017. Woodchuck College. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 5(2) (June), 33-36.

Marmota monax is a valuable laboratory animal species used in studies of Hepatitis B virus (HBV), food intake, obesity, hibernation, and circannual cycles. This article describes the woodchuck’s (also known as groundhog) natural behavior and...

Grant, C., Marks, L., Prior, H. 2017. Provision of food and water in rodent whole body plethysmography safety pharmacology respiratory studies – Impact on animal welfare and data quality. Journal of Pharmacological and Toxicological Methods 88(Part 1), 79-84.

Introduction: We evaluated the feasibility of providing food and water to rodents during whole body plethysmography (WBP) studies as a welfare improvement to standard conditions. Methods: Male Han Wistar rats or CD1 mice (n=8) were...

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...

Novak, J., Stojanovski, K., Melotti, L. et al. 2016. Effects of stereotypic behaviour and chronic mild stress on judgement bias in laboratory mice. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 174, 162-172.

Cognitive processes are influenced by underlying affective states, and tests of cognitive bias have recently been developed to assess the valence of affective states in animals. These tests are based on the fact that individuals...

Makowska, I. J., Weary, D. M. 2016. Differences in anticipatory behaviour between rats (Rattus norvegicus) housed in standard versus semi-naturalistic laboratory environments. PLOS ONE 11(1), e0147595.

Laboratory rats are usually kept in relatively small cages, but research has shown that they prefer larger and more complex environments. The physiological, neurological and health effects of standard laboratory housing are well established, but...

Novak, J., Bailoo, J. D., Melotti, L. et al. 2016. Effect of cage-induced stereotypies on measures of affective state and recurrent perseveration in CD-1 and C57BL/6 mice. PLOS ONE 11(5), e0153203.

Stereotypies are abnormal repetitive behaviour patterns that are highly prevalent in laboratory mice and are thought to reflect impaired welfare. Thus, they are associated with impaired behavioural inhibition and may also reflect negative affective states...

Whittaker, A. L., Lymn, K. A., Howarth, G. S. 2016. Effects of metabolic cage housing on rat behavior and performance in the social interaction test. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 19(4), 363-374.

Although the metabolic cage is commonly used for housing nonhuman animals in the laboratory, it has been recognized as constituting a unique stressor. Such an environment would be expected to affect behavioral change in animals...

Byrd, C. P., Winnicker, C., Gaskill, B. N. 2016. Instituting dark-colored cover to improve central space use within guinea pig enclosure. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 19(4), 408-413.

Domestic guinea pigs (Cavia aperea f. porcellus) in laboratories have been shown to actively avoid the centers of their cages. This experiment tested a novel, dark-colored “shader” placed over the central portion of a cage...

Cornale, P., Macchi, E., Renna, M. et al. 2016. Effect of cage type on fecal corticosterone concentration in buck rabbits during the reproductive cycle. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 19(1), 90-96.

Fecal corticosterone concentration (FCC) was measured in 14 buck rabbits individually housed in standard-dimension cages (SC) or in bigger cages (BC; with a volume more than double that of SC and equipped with a plastic...

Allen, K. P., Dwinell, M. R., Zappa, A. M. et al. 2016. Rat breeding parameters according to floor space available in cage. JAALAS 55(1), 21–24.

The cage floor space recommended for a female rat with a litter is greater in the 8th edition of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals than in previous editions. As a...

Makowska, I. J., Weary, D. M. 2016. The importance of burrowing, climbing and standing upright for laboratory rats. Royal Society Open Science 3, 160136.

Standard laboratory cages prevent rats (Rattus norvegicus) from performing many behaviours that they perform in the wild, but little is known about how this may affect their welfare. The aims of this study were (i)...

Ross, S. R., Shender, M. A. 2016. Daily travel distances of zoo-housed chimpanzees and gorillas: Implications for welfare assessments and space requirements. Primates 57(3), 395-401.

The degree to which the relatively smaller area of artificial environments (compared with natural habitats) has measureable effects on the behavior and welfare of captive animals has been debated for many years. While there is...

Gardiner, P. 2016. Going outside ASPA guidelines. Animal Technology and Welfare 15(1), 47-52.

This article will discuss an improved and refined technique used for working and caring for a group of diabetic mice. As a team of animal technologists, academics and named veterinary surgeon, we developed a new...

Enser, S. 2016. Comparison of housing and welfare of group housed rabbits. Animal Technology and Welfare 15(1), 77-79.

This poster is based on welfare improvements gained from group housing rabbits in floor pens in the new Antibody Production Facility with a focus on development, behaviours and environmental enrichment in both male and female...