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. 
Golledge, H., Richardson, C. (Eds.) 2024. The UFAW Handbook on the Care and Management of Laboratory and Other Research Animals (9th ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. 1040 p.

The latest edition of the seminal reference on the care and management of laboratory and research animals. The newly revised ninth edition of The UFAW Handbook on the Care and Management of Laboratory and Other...

Mantz, M., Pugerud, A. 2024. Overcoming the hurdles of lab animal enrichment: Natural behaviors vs. scientific need. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 12(1) (January/February), 32-34.

The Animal Resources Core (ARC) at the Abigail Wexner Research Institute (AWRI) at Nationwide Children’s Hospital (NCH) faces many of the same challenges other institutions manage in terms of enrichment for laboratory animals. A Behavior...

Claydon, M., Brereton, J., Rose, P. 2024. Never be mute about bird welfare: Swanning around with environmental enrichment. Zoo Biology 43(1), 83–91.

Environmental enrichment (EE) is commonly provided to animals managed under human care, being beneficial to behavioral diversity and improving animal welfare. Use of EE appears to be particularly beneficial to individual wild animals spending a...

Fernandez, E. J. 2024. The least inhibitive, functionally effective (LIFE) model: A new framework for ethical animal training practices. Journal of Veterinary Behavior 71, 63–68.

The ethics of animal training procedures have seen dramatic changes in the last few decades, with a movement toward reward-based training methods. These reward-based training practices have also been directly impacted by the behavioral and...

Song, Y., Xie, S. 2024. Effects of substrate roughening on the swimming performance of Schizothorax wangchiachii (Fang, 1936) in the Heishui River: Implications for vertical slot fishway design. Journal of Fish Biology 104(2), 473–483.

Re-establishing the natural connectivity of rivers using fishways may mitigate the unfavourable effects of dam construction on riverine biodiversity and freshwater fish populations. Knowledge of the swimming performance of target species in specific regions is...

Robinson, L. M., Weiss, A. (Eds.) 2023. Nonhuman Primate Welfare: From History, Science, and Ethics to Practice. Springer, Cham, Switzerland. 671 p.

This volume reviews the broad topic of welfare in nonhuman primates under human care. Chapters detail the history of primates in captivity, ethical and legal issues surrounding the use of nonhuman primates as entertainment or...

Almeida, M. M., Cabrita, E., Fatsini, E. 2023. The use of sand substrate modulates dominance behaviour and brain gene expression in a flatfish species. Animals 13(6), 978.

Physical complexity adds physical enrichment to rearing conditions. This enrichment promotes fish welfare and reduces detrimental characteristics that fish develop in captivity. Senegalese sole (Solea senegalensis) is an important species for European aquaculture, where it...

Brando, S., Vitale, A., Bacon, M. 2023. Promoting good nonhuman primate welfare outside regular working hours. Animals 13(8), 1423.

Promoting good primate welfare outside of daylight hours is an important task. The responsibility to provide a complex environment and environmental enrichment is an essential element of primate wellbeing programs that should be approached from...

D’Alessio, R. M., Hanlon, A., O’Driscoll, K. 2023. Comparison of single- and double-spaced feeders with regard to damaging behavior in pigs. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 10, 1073401.

This work compared the behavior and performance of 24 groups of 12 pigs kept in pens with either a DOUBLE [one feed space aligned with the front wall of the pen (WALL), and one immediately...

Eeza, M. N. H., Singer, R., Ding, Y. et al. 2023. Probing microstructural changes in muscles of leptin-deficient zebrafish by non-invasive ex-vivo magnetic resonance microimaging. PLOS ONE 18(4), e0284215.

Leptin is a hormone that plays a key role in controlling food intake and energy homeostasis. Skeletal muscle is an important target for leptin and recent studies have shown that leptin deficiency may lead to...

Franks, B., Gaffney, L. P., Graham, C. et al. 2023. Curiosity in zebrafish (Danio rerio)? Behavioral responses to 30 novel objects. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 9, 1062420.

Curiosity—the motivation to seek out information—has been studied widely across the animal kingdom. To investigate curiosity in zebrafish we presented 30 novel objects to groups of zebrafish housed in semi-naturalistic tanks (6 tanks; 10 fish/tank...

Johnson, J. 2023. A new strategy for animal research: Attending to dissent. Animals 13(9), 1491.

Increasingly, ethical concepts ordinarily reserved for the human research setting have been applied to nonhuman animals in research. This comes at the same time as concerns mount over challenges in translating the results of biomedical...

Jorge, S., Félix, L., Costas, B. et al. 2023. Housing conditions affect adult zebrafish (Danio rerio) behavior but not their physiological status. Animals 13(6), 1120.

Zebrafish is a valuable model for neuroscience research, but the housing conditions to which it is exposed daily may be impairing its welfare status. The use of environmental enrichment and the refinement of methodology for...

Kaiser, S., Korte, A., Wistuba, J. et al. 2023. Effects of castration and sterilization on baseline and response levels of cortisol—A case study in male guinea pigs. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 9, 1093157.

An uncontrolled reproduction of animals in human hands should be avoided. To meet this goal, animals are widely castrated, i.e., the gonads are completely removed. Since the gonads are the most important source of sex...

Liu, P., Roberts, S., Shoemaker, J. T. et al. 2023. Validation of a 3D perfused cell culture platform as a tool for humanised preclinical drug testing in breast cancer using established cell lines and patient-derived tissues. PLOS ONE 18(3), e0283044.

3D cell culture models of cancer are currently being developed to recapitulate in vivo physiological conditions and to assess therapeutic responses. However, most models failed to incorporate the biochemical and biophysical stimuli from fluid flow...

Matrai, E., Chan, H. Y. A., Leung, F. M. et al. 2023. Point for enrichment, point for welfare—Testing use of a laser pointer with Arapaima gigas. Animals 13(8), 1370.

The arapaima (Arapaima gigas) is one of the largest freshwater fish species, known to exceed 3 m in total length. It is listed as Data Deficient by the IUCN. A. gigas is native to the...

Miller, L. J., Chinnadurai, S. K. 2023. Beyond the five freedoms: Animal welfare at modern zoological facilities. Animals 13(11), 1818.

The current manuscript highlights the aspects of an animal welfare program for a modern zoological facility. The program should be proactive to identify areas for continuous improvement as well as reactive to address any identified...

Miller, R., Grott, A., Patzkéwitsch, D. et al. 2023. Behavior of piglets in an observation arena before and after castration with local anesthesia. Animals 13(3), 529.

Surgical castration of piglets is generally recognized as a painful procedure, but there is currently no gold standard for the assessment of pain behavior in piglets. However, pain assessment is essential for evaluating the effectiveness...

Morgado, J. N., Lamonaca, E., Santeramo, F. G. et al. 2023. Effects of management strategies on animal welfare and productivity under heat stress: A synthesis. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 10, 1145610.

Climate change includes different dramatic events, and among them, heat stress exposition is the strongest phenomenon affecting the livestock sector. The effects of heat stress events on animal welfare are complex and the economic impacts...

Palermo Mendes, J., Ribeiro Caldara, F., de Castro Burbarelli, M. F. et al. 2023. Performance and welfare of sows exposed to auditory environmental enrichment in mixed or collective housing systems. Animals 13(7), 1226.

The research aimed to assess the effects of auditory environmental enrichment on sows in mixed housing (caged until 35 days after insemination and then collective pens) or collective housing (caged until 72 h after insemination...

Peruga, M., Kawala, B., Sarul, M. et al. 2023. Are currently selected laboratory animals useful in the research of how female hormones influence orthodontic biomechanics? Animals 13(4), 629.

Animal testing was and remains the only method of introducing a certain treatment and medical procedure on humans. On the other hand, animals have their rights resulting from applicable legal acts, including Directive 2010/63/EU and...

Robles, I., Luna, S. P. L., Trindade, P. H. E. et al. 2023. Validation of the Unesp-Botucatu pig composite acute pain scale (UPAPS) in piglets undergoing castration. PLOS ONE 18(4), e0284218.

To accurately assess pain and support broadly-based analgesic protocols to mitigate swine pain, it is imperative to develop and validate a species-specific pain scale. The objective of this study was to investigate the clinical validity...

Rørvang, M. V., Schild, S.-L. A., Stenfelt, J. et al. 2023. Odor exploration behavior of the domestic pig (Sus scrofa) as indicator of enriching properties of odors. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 17, 1173298.

Although the sense of smell in pigs is widely recognized as being highly developed, surprisingly little is known about their sensory ability. This study aimed to (a) identify which non-social odors pigs were able to...

Scatterty, K. R., Pitman, T., Eckersley, T. et al. 2023. Zebrafish aversion to infrasound in an open field test. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 16, 1019368.

Aquatic species are capable of detecting infrasound (sub-20 Hz frequencies) which may be a source of anthropogenic pollution and have a detrimental impact on the environmental fitness of fish. Infrasound is generated by infrastructure, producing...

Van Kerschaver, C., Turpin, D., Michiels, J. et al. 2023. Reducing weaning stress in piglets by pre-weaning socialization and gradual separation from the sow: A review. Animals 13(10), 1644.

The weaning of pigs in most commercial pork production systems is an abrupt event performed at a fairly young age, i.e., mostly between 2.5 and 5 weeks of age. This practice induces a stress response...