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. 
Ober, R. A., Geist, G. E. 2020. Assessment of a noninvasive chronic glucose monitoring system in euglycemic and diabetic swine (Sus scrofa). JAALAS 59(4), 430-437.

Models of type-I diabetes are well-characterized and commonly used in the preclinical evaluation of drugs and medical devices. The diabetic minipig is an excellent example of a translational model. However, chronic glucose monitoring in this...

Mogil, J. S., Pang, D. S. J., Silva Dutra, G. G. et al. 2020. The development and use of facial grimace scales for pain measurement in animals. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 116, 480-496.

The measurement of pain in animals is surprisingly complex, and remains a critical issue in veterinary care and biomedical research. Based on the known utility of pain measurement via facial expression in verbal and especially...

Wallgren, T., Larsen, A., Gunnarsson, S. 2019. Tail posture as an indicator of tail biting in undocked finishing pigs. Animals 9(1), 18.

Tail posture (i.e., hanging or curled) has been suggested to be an indicator of tail biting, and hanging tails predisposed to damage. The aim of this study was to investigate if tail posture was feasible...

Marcet-Rius, M., Fàbrega, E., Cozzi, A. et al. 2019. Are tail and ear movements indicators of emotions in tail-docked pigs in response to environmental enrichment? Animals 9(7), 449.

The inclusion of emotional indicators in farm monitoring methods can improve welfare assessments. Studies in controlled conditions have suggested that increased tail movement is an indicator of positive emotions in pigs, while others have proposed...

Larsen, M. L. V., Pedersen, L. J., Jensen, D. B. 2019. Prediction of tail biting events in finisher pigs from automatically recorded sensor data. Animals 9(7), 458.

Tail biting in pigs is an animal welfare problem, and tail biting should be prevented from developing into tail damage. One strategy could be to predict events of tail biting so that the farmer can...

Portele, K., Scheck, K., Siegmann, S. et al. 2019. Sow-piglet nose contacts in free-farrowing pens. Animals 9(8), 513.

Nose contact is a frequent form of social behaviour in pigs, but the motivational reasons underlying this behaviour remain unclear. We investigated the frequency, direction and type of sow–piglet nosing behaviour and its association with...

Mattiello, S., Battini, M., De Rosa, G. et al. 2019. How can we assess positive welfare in ruminants? Animals 9(10), 758.

Until now, most research has focused on the development of indicators of negative welfare, and relatively few studies provide information on valid, reliable, and feasible indicators addressing positive aspects of animal welfare. However, a lack...

Rault, J.-L., Truong, S., Hemsworth, L. et al. 2019. Gentle abdominal stroking (‘belly rubbing’) of pigs by a human reduces EEG total power and increases EEG frequencies. Behavioural Brain Research 374, 111892.

The neurobiological response to gentle touch remains poorly understood, especially in the context of human-animal interaction. A novel approach allowed recording the pig electroencephalogram (EEG) cranially epidurally and wirelessly during positive interactions with a human...

Horback, K.M., Parsons, T.D. 2019. Judgement bias testing in group-housed gestating sows. Behavioural Processes 159, 86-92.

Societal concerns about animal welfare have triggered the movement of gestating sows from individual stalls to group housing in many countries. Common methods of assessing sow welfare focus on overt physical ailments, and potentially neglect...

Moser, J., Burla, J.-B., Gygax, L. 2019. Executing specific foraging behaviours does not represent a general goal state of foraging in dry sows (Sus scrofa). Behavioural Processes 164, 115-122.

Intensively housed domestic pigs (Sus scrofa) have little opportunity to perform diverse foraging behaviour though they still seem strongly motivated to do so. Here, we investigated whether the execution of specific behaviours may in itself...

Boileau, A., Farish, M., Turner, S. P. et al. 2019. Infrared thermography of agonistic behaviour in pigs. Physiology & Behavior 210, 112637.

Infrared thermography (IRT) or thermal imaging is increasingly being used as a non-invasive method to gain information on animals' physiological and emotional state. IRT has the potential to serve as a non-invasive quantitative assessment method...

Weller, J. E., Camerlink, I., Turner, S. P. et al. 2019. Playful pigs: Early life play-fighting experience influences later life contest dynamics. Animal Behaviour 158, 269-279.

Animal contests are costly and predicted to be won by the individual with the higher resource-holding potential (RHP). Weight is often used a proxy for RHP; however, victory does not always go to the heaviest...

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...

Machado, M., Oliveira da Silva, I. J. 2019. Does farm animals experience emotions and feelings? Journal of Animal Behaviour and Biometeorology 7(4), 170-175.

In recent years, there has been a great increase in the interest of "emotion" and how it can be studied and translated from animals. Emotions arise when the brain receives an external stimulus, while the...

Špinka, M. 2019. Animal agency, animal awareness and animal welfare. Animal Welfare 28(1), 11–20.

In nature, animals need to actively engage with the environment in order to prosper in survival and reproduction. Hence, agency is a central adaptive characteristic of animal life. In this paper, I propose that from...

Luo, L., Reimert, I., de Haas, E. N. et al. 2019. Effects of early and later life environmental enrichment and personality on attention bias in pigs (Sus scrofa domesticus). Animal Cognition 22(6), 959–972.

We investigated effects of early and later life housing on attention bias, as an indicator of affective state, in pigs differing in coping style [reactive (LR) vs. proactive (HR)]. Pigs (n = 128) in barren or enriched...

D’Eath, R. B., Jack, M., Futro, A. et al. 2018. Automatic early warning of tail biting in pigs: 3D cameras can detect lowered tail posture before an outbreak. PLOS ONE 13(4), e0194524.

Tail biting is a major welfare and economic problem for indoor pig producers worldwide. Low tail posture is an early warning sign which could reduce tail biting unpredictability. Taking a precision livestock farming approach, we...

Rius, M. M., Pageat, P., Bienboire-Frosini, C. et al. 2018. Tail and ear movements as possible indicators of emotions in pigs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 205, 14-18.

A better understanding of animal emotions is an important goal in disciplines ranging from neuroscience to animal welfare science, but few reliable tools exist for measuring these emotions. Play behaviour is generally recognized as a...

Rius, M. M., Cozzi, A., Bienboire-Frosini, C. et al. 2018. Selection of putative indicators of positive emotions triggered by object and social play in mini-pigs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 202, 13-19.

Positive welfare is more than the absence of negative experiences. Nevertheless, there are few feasible animal-based measures for positive welfare. This study aimed to investigate whether object and social play behaviours in pigs, which is...

Lahrmann, H. P., Hansen, C. F., D’Eath, R. et al. 2018. Tail posture predicts tail biting outbreaks at pen level in weaner pigs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 200, 29-35.

Detecting a tail biting outbreak early is essential to reduce the risk of pigs getting severe tail damage. A few previous studies suggest that tail posture and behavioural differences can predict an upcoming outbreak. The...

Brown, S.M., Peters, R., Nevison, I.M. et al. 2018. Playful pigs: Evidence of consistency and change in play depending on litter and developmental stage. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 198, 36-43.

Play behaviour in pre-weaned piglets has previously been shown to vary consistently between litters. This study aimed to determine if these pre-weaning litter differences in play behaviour were also consistent in the post-weaning period. Seven...

Wedin, M., Baxter, E. M., Jack, M. et al. 2018. Early indicators of tail biting outbreaks in pigs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 208, 7-13.

Tail biting outbreaks in pig farming cause suffering through pain and stress, and producers lose revenue due to carcass condemnation. Reliable behavioural indications of when an outbreak is imminent would provide farmers with tools for...

Vestbjerg Larsen, M. L., Andersen, H. M.-L., Pedersen, L. J. 2018. Tail posture as a detector of tail damage and an early detector of tail biting in finishing pigs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 209, 30-35.

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the relation between the tail posture of finishing pigs and tail damage with the aims to use tail posture as (1) a detector of tail damage...

Ekesbo, I., Gunnarsson, S. 2018. Farm Animal Behaviour: Characteristics for Assessment and Welfare (2nd ed). CABI, Wallingford, UK.

Completely updated and revised, and with a new author team, this second edition of Farm Animal Behaviour continues to provide essential information on normal and stereotypic behaviors in a wide variety of farm animals to...

Leliveld, L. M. C., Düpjan, S., Tuchscherer, A. et al. 2017. Vocal correlates of emotional reactivity within and across contexts in domestic pigs (Sus scrofa). Physiology & Behavior 181, 117-126.

Vocalizations have long been recognized to encode information about an individual's emotional state and, as such, have contributed to the study of emotions in animals. However, the potential of vocalizations to also encode information about...