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. 
Edwards, G. L., Michael, J. A., Parks., A. 2018. Agricultural animals as biomedical models: Occupational health and safety considerations. ILAR Journal 59(2), 161-167.

The use of agricultural animals in biomedical research is increasing. Their overall size and metabolic rate, organ size, longer gestation period, and other physiological similarities make them good candidates for animal models of human disease...

Byrd, R., Boyd, S., Buckmaster, C. 2018. Rat thunder jacket— A zen experience. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 6(3) (September), 55-57.

Germ-free rats are fairly uncommon, relative to germ-free mice, and restraining these animals safely and effectively for compound administration and blood collection can be challenging. There are many commercially available varieties of restraint devices, but...

Burke, C. J., Kisko, T. M., Swiftwolfe, H. et al. 2017. Specific 50-kHz vocalizations are tightly linked to particular types of behavior in juvenile rats anticipating play. PLOS ONE 12(5), e0175841.

Rat ultrasonic vocalizations have been suggested to be either a byproduct of physical movement or, in the case of 50-kHz calls, a means to communicate positive affect. Yet there are up to 14 distinct types...

Sommerville, R., Ruiz, R., Averós, X. 2017. A meta-analysis on the effects of the housing environment on the behaviour, mortality, and performance of growing rabbits. Animal Welfare 26(2), 223-238.

Although the number of rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) produced in Europe is important, they are under-represented in welfare research. Studies on the effects of housing conditions have focused on performance and mortality. We conducted a meta-analysis...

Castelhano-Carlos, M. J., Baumans, V., Sousa, N. 2017. PhenoWorld: Addressing animal welfare in a new paradigm to house and assess rat behaviour. Laboratory Animals 51(1), 36-43.

The use of animals is essential in biomedical research. The laboratory environment where the animals are housed has a major impact on them throughout their lives and influences the outcome of animal experiments. Therefore, there...

Stella, J. L., Croney, C. C., Buffington, C. T. 2017. Behavior and welfare of domestic cats housed in cages larger than U.S. norm. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 20(3), 296-312.

The effect of providing additional floor space on cat behavior and welfare is not well documented. This study involved replication of an investigation of cats’ responses to enhanced cage and room environments using cages of...

Nordquist, R., van der Staay, F., van Eerdenburg, F. et al. 2017. Mutilating procedures, management practices, and housing conditions that may affect the welfare of farm animals: Implications for welfare research. Animals 7(2), 12.

A number of mutilating procedures, such as dehorning in cattle and goats and beak trimming in laying hens, are common in farm animal husbandry systems in an attempt to prevent or solve problems, such as...

Brenneis, C., Westhof, A., Holschbach, J. et al. 2017. Automated tracking of motion and body weight for objective monitoring of rats in colony housing. JAALAS 56(1), 18-31.

Living together in large social communities within an enriched environment stimulates self-motivated activity in rats. We developed a modular housing system in which a single unit can accommodate as many as 48 rats and contains...

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...

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...

McGowan, R. T. S., Ellis, J. J., Bensky, M. K. et al. 2017. The ins and outs of the litter box: A detailed ethogram of cat elimination behavior in two contrasting environments. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 194, 67-78.

Few studies have sought to describe cat elimination behavior in detail and much of the information presently available focuses on factors that potentially cause cats to reject a litter box. Thus, the ethograms published in...

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...

Bryan, K., Bremner-Harrison, S., Price, E. et al. 2017. The impact of exhibit type on behaviour of caged and free-ranging tamarins. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 193, 77-86.

The lack of appropriate stimuli associated with captive environments has been documented to cause several behavioural and physiological issues in captive species, including loss of natural behaviours, psychopathologies and decreased reproductive success. Providing free-ranging, naturalistic...

Sutherland, M. A., Lowe, G. L., Watson, T. J. et al. 2017. Dairy goats prefer to use different flooring types to perform different behaviours. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 197, 24-31.

Flooring is an important component of indoor housing systems for livestock as it can impact animal hygiene and welfare. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the lying and elimination preferences of goats...

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...

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...

Cavallaro, J., Stevens Jr., R. W., Wilson, B. et al. 2017. Social housing pig tail macaques in repurposed chimpanzee enclosures. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 5(2) (June), 60-61.

As chimpanzees are retired from research, enclosures such as the Primadomes™ become available for repurposing for other monkey species. However, modifications are necessary to meet specific monkey species needs, and considerations for animal handling and...

Roth, T. S., Bionda, T. R., Sterck, E. H. M. 2017. Recapturing the canopy: Stimulating Bornean orang-utan (Pongo pygmaeus) natural locomotion behaviour in a zoo environment. Journal of Zoo and Aquarium Research 5(1), 16-24.

Orang-utans are the largest mainly arboreal animal: wild orang-utans rarely come to the forest floor. In contrast, the locomotion behaviour of captive orang-utans encompasses more time on the ground and they spend less time on...

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...

Martín, O., Vinyoles, D., García-Galea, E. et al. 2016. Improving the welfare of a zoo-housed male drill (Mandrillus leucophaeus poensis) aggressive toward visitors. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 19(4), 323-334.

Improving the welfare of nonhuman animals in captivity and maintaining behavioral competence for future conservation purposes is of the highest priority for zoos. The behavior of an aggressive male drill (Mandrillus leucophaeus poensis) was assessed...

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...

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)...