Refinement Database

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

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

Links to the full text for publications that appear in open access journals or are published on the AWI website are provided under the abstract.

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 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. Most publications older than 2010 can only be searched by keyword. 
Scariot, P. P., Gobatto, C. A., Polisel, E. E. et al. 2022. Early-life mice housed in standard stocking density reduce the spontaneous physical activity and increase visceral fat deposition before reaching adulthood. Laboratory Animals 56(4), 344-355.
Laboratory rodents spend the entire day housed in standard cages that provide a restricted area for movements and might, therefore, limit physical activity. However, it has not been tested in immature rodents of ages ranging...
MacLellan, A., Nazal, B., Young et al. 2022. Waking inactivity as a welfare indicator in laboratory mice: Investigating postures, facial expressions and depression-like states. Royal Society Open Science 9(11), 221083.
Animal welfare assessment relies on valid and practical indicators of affect. In mice, the most widely used research vertebrates, lying still with eyes open, inactive-but-awake (IBA) in the home cage, has potential to be one...
Novak, J., Jaric, I., Rosso, M. et al. 2022. Handling method affects measures of anxiety, but not chronic stress in mice. Scientific Reports 12(1), 20938.
Studies in mice have shown that less aversive handling methods (e.g. tunnel or cup handling) can reduce behavioural measures of anxiety in comparison to picking mice up by their tail. Despite such evidence, tail handling...
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...
Vonk, J., McGuire, M. C., Johnson-Ulrich, Z. 2021. Bearing fruit: Piloting a novel judgment bias task in an American black bear. Zoo Biology 40(2), 89-97.
Judgment bias tasks can reveal changes in affect in animals as a function of environmental manipulations such as provision of enrichment. We assessed affect in an American black bear across seasonal changes in availability of...
Travain, T., Valsecchi, P. 2021. Infrared thermography in the study of animals’ emotional responses: A critical review. Animals 11(9), 2510.
Whether animals have emotions was historically a long-lasting question but, today, nobody disputes that they do. However, how to assess them and how to guarantee animals their welfare have become important research topics in the...
MacLellan, A., Fureix, C., Polanco, A. et al. 2021. Can animals develop depression? An overview and assessment of “depression-like” states. Behaviour 158(14/15), 1303–1353.
Describing certain animal behaviours as 'depression-like' or 'depressive' has become common across several fields of research. These typically involve unusually low activity or unresponsiveness and/or reduced interest in pleasure (anhedonia). While the term 'depression-like' carefully...
Kersemans, V., Wallington, S., Allen, P. D. et al. 2020. Manganese-free chow, a refined non-invasive solution to reduce gastrointestinal signal for T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging of the mouse abdomen. Laboratory Animals 54(4), 353–364.
Commercial mouse chow is designed to provide a complete, nutrient-rich diet, and it can contain upwards of 100 mg/kg manganese, an essential mineral. Manganese acts as a relaxation time-shortening contrast agent for both T1 and T2...
Elwood, R. W. 2020. Do arthropods respond to noxious stimuli purely by reflex? Animal Sentience 29(10).
Mikhalevich & Powell (2020) argue that it is wrong to dismiss the idea of sentience in invertebrates. Here, I expand on the evidence for crustaceans responding to noxious stimuli in ways that are not explained...
McMahon, S. A., Wigham, E. 2020. ‘All Ears’: A questionnaire of 1516 owner perceptions of the mental abilities of pet rabbits, subsequent resource provision, and the effect on welfare. Animals 10(10), 1730.
Pet rabbit welfare is a hidden crisis: Inappropriately housed, fed, and not routinely provided healthcare—rabbits can often suffer painful conditions and shortened lifespans. This study provides novel understanding of owners’ perceptions of rabbits’ mental capabilities...
Fife-Cook, I., Franks, B. 2019. Positive welfare for fishes: Rationale and areas for future study. Fishes 4(2), 31.
Traditional animal welfare paradigms have focused on maintaining physical health and mitigating negative impacts to wellbeing. Recently, however, the field has increasingly recognized the importance of positive welfare (i.e., mental and physical states that exceed...
Jirkof, P., Rudeck, J., Lewejohann, L. 2019. Assessing affective state in laboratory rodents to promote animal welfare—What is the progress in applied refinement research? Animals 9(12), 1026.
In the past, there was a strong focus on avoiding or reducing negative animal welfare in animal experimentation. Recently, the importance of promoting positive animal welfare in laboratory animals has been highlighted. To ensure and...
McMillan, F. D. (ed). 2019. Mental Health and Well-being in Animals (2nd ed). CABI, Wallingford, UK.
This second edition is fully revised, expanded, and comprehensively updated with the most current knowledge about the full array of mental health issues seen in animals. Written by key opinion leaders, internationally-recognized experts and specialists...
Aujnaraina, A. B., Luoa, O. D., Taylor, N. et al. 2018. Effects of exercise and enrichment on behaviour in CD-1 mice. Behavioural Brain Research 342, 43-50.
A host of scholarly work has characterized the positive effects of exercise and environmental enrichment on behaviour and cognition in animal studies. The purpose of this study was to investigate the uptake and longitudinal impact...
Bailoo, J. D., Murphy, E., Varholick, J. A. et al. 2018. Evaluation of the effects of space allowance on measures of animal welfare in laboratory mice. Scientific Reports 8, 713.
We studied how space allowance affects measures of animal welfare in mice by systematically varying group size and cage type across three levels each in both males and females of two strains of mice (C57BL/6ByJ...
Champneys, T., Castaldo, G., Consuegra, S., et al. 2018. Density dependent changes in neophobia and stress-coping styles in the world’s oldest farmed fish. Royal Society Open Science 5(12), 181473.
Farmed fish are typically reared at densities much higher than those observed in the wild, but to what extent crowding results in abnormal behaviours that can impact welfare and stress coping styles is subject to...
Neff, E. P. 2018. Home sweet home cage. Lab Animal 47(10), 261–264.
This feature describes creative ways in which technology can be used to study animals within their home cages, eliminating the need to handle, restrain, and separate them from cage mates. One example includes voluntary brain...
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...
Sánchez-Muros, M. J., Sánchez, B., Barroso, F. G. et al. 2016. Effects of culture densities on feed demand, behavioural tests and on the hepatic and cerebral oxidative status in tilapia (Oreochromis sp.). Applied Animal Behaviour Science 185, 137-145.
The present study examines whether fish density affects behavioural tests, feed demand, and different parameters indicative of the oxidative status of the liver and brain of Orechromis sp. to identify welfare indicators for fish culturing...
Brown, C. 2015. Fish intelligence, sentience and ethics. Animal Cognition 18(1), 1-17.
Fish are one of the most highly utilised vertebrate taxa by humans; they are harvested from wild stocks as part of global fishing industries, grown under intensive aquaculture conditions, are the most common pet and...
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...
Bode, A. E., Barber, H. 2014. Use of vinyl nonadhesive tape as an alternative for positioning rodents in small animal imaging. American Association for Laboratory Animal Science [AALAS] Meeting Official Program, 597-598. (Abstract #P185).
Specific positioning for different imaging modalities is essential in our small animal imaging core. While we have different animal holders designed to position the animal inside the MRI, additional securing of the animal to the...
Whittaker, A. L., Howarth, G. S., Hickman, D. L. 2012. Effects of space allocation and housing density on measures of wellbeing in laboratory mice: A review. Laboratory Animals 46(1), 3-13.
In the majority of countries where there are legislative requirements pertaining to the use of animals in research, figures are quoted for minimum cage sizes or space allocation to be provided per animal. These figures...
Õkva, K., Nevalainen, T., Mauranen, K. et al. 2010. The effect of three different items of cage furniture on the behaviour of male C57BL/6J mice in the plus-maze test. Animal Welfare 19(4), 401-409.
The aim of this study was to assess the effects of specific regimens of enrichment on the behaviour of C57BL/6J mice in the elevated plus-maze test (EPM). A total of 192 male C57BL/6J mice were...
Li, W. J., Yu, H., Yang, J. M. et al. 2010. Anxiolytic effect of music exposure on BDNFMet/Met transgenic mice. Brain Research 1347, 71-79.
Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) has been reported to play important roles in the modulation of anxiety, mood stabilizers, and pathophysiology of affective disorders. Recently, a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the BDNF gene (Val66Met) has...

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