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. 

Endotracheal intubation of laboratory animals is a common procedure shared by several research fields for different purposes, such as mechanical ventilation of anaesthetized animals, instillation of cytotoxic nanoparticles, infectious agents or tumour cells for induction...

Rabbits are usually singly housed in laboratories, but a new emphasis on providing social housing for social species has prompted exploration of alternative housing for this species. However, a paucity of literature on the social...

Group housing is highly important for social animals. However, it can also give rise to aggression, one of the most serious welfare concerns in laboratory mouse husbandry. Severe fighting can lead to pain, injury and...

Aggression is a major welfare issue in mice, particularly when mice unfamiliar to each other are first placed in cages, as happens on receipt from a vendor, and following cage cleaning. Injuries from aggression are...

It is widely recommended to group-house male laboratory mice because they are ‘social animals’, but male mice do not naturally share territories and aggression can be a serious welfare problem. Even without aggression, not all...

There is considerable interest in refining laboratory rodent environments to promote animal well-being, as well as research reproducibility. Few studies have evaluated the long term impact of enhancing rodent environments with resources and additional cagemates...

The 8th Edition of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals clarified its language regarding housing social species, specifying that, “Single housing of social species should be the exception…”. This is a...

Factors leading to the harmful consumption of substances, like alcohol and sucrose, involve a complex interaction of genes and the environment. While we cannot control the genes we inherit, we can modify our environment. Understanding...

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...

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...

Reproducibility in animal studies has been defined as the ability of a result to be replicated through independent experiments within the same or among different laboratories. Over the past few years, much has been written...

In the US, the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) and its enabling regulations (AWAR) cover all warm-blooded animals used for research, testing, experimentation, or exhibition. The only exceptions, made in the enabling regulations, are for two...

The act of grooming has been found to greatly decrease stress, heart rate, and cortisol levels in nonhuman primates; this decrease in stress and cortisol is seen in the animal being groomed, as well as...

Early developmental environment can have profound effects on individual physiology, behaviour, and learning. In birds and mammals, social isolation during development is known to negatively affect learning ability; yet in other taxa, like reptiles, the...

Mice are used extensively in physiological research. Automated home‐cage systems have been developed to study single‐housed animals. Increased stress by different housing conditions might affect greatly the results when investigating metabolic responses. Urinary corticosteroid concentration...

An unfavourable yet necessary side-effect of stereotaxic surgery involves the social isolation of post-surgery rats, in order to protect their wound site or skull-mounted implant from damage. Social isolation can cause a myriad of behavioural...

Little is known regarding the prevalence of aggression seen during introductions of captive gibbons (Hylobatidae). In this study, an online survey was developed to quantify and collect contextual details regarding the frequency and types of...

Social pain is the negative affect signaling threat or harm to social relationships. Loneliness is perceived social isolation and can be found across phylogeny. Evidence from diverse fields demonstrates an overlap of social and physical...

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...

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of density on growth rate, agonistic behaviour, activity and use of space by hatchling C. porosus in captivity. Hatchling C. porosus were raised in identical...

Group housing is becoming the standard for many farm animal species, as it is seen as a more welfare friendly way of keeping gregarious animals. Aggression between female breeding rabbits currently obstructs the implementation of...

The objective of the study was to investigate if environmental enrichment and the composition of the social group would affect the behavior and relative brain weight of growing rabbits. Rabbits (72 males and 72 females)...

The Principles and guidelines for the care and use of non-human primates for scientific purposes is a revision of NHMRC’s Policy on the care and use of non-human primates for scientific purposes 2003 (the Policy)...

Group housing is often assumed to improve the welfare of gregarious species. Whether this is actually the case depends on the advantages (e.g. more opportunity for social and locomotor behaviour) and disadvantages (e.g. increased fighting...

Few studies have evaluated the long-term effects of providing environmental resources to mice. This consideration is important given that mice are often maintained in vivaria for months. We evaluated the effects of providing simple cage...