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. 

The most common housing system for reproduction rabbits, individual cage housing on a wire floor, is increasingly scrutinized because of its potential detrimental impact on animal welfare. We compared three types of housing: (1) individual...

Since 10 years, EU-legislation states that "pigs must have permanent access to sufficient quantity of material to enable proper investigation and manipulation activities." While much research has focused on which materials enable proper investigation and...

Although commercial farrowing sheds keep individual litters separated, previous studies have suggested that housing systems that allow socialisation of piglets pre-weaning can reduce aggression after weaning. This study tested whether pigs socialised with non-litter mates...

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...

Sewage back-up and overflows in the rooms of our primate facility initiated an analysis of the factors contributing to the clogging of the drains. An investigation reviewing the materials responsible for the clogging of the...

This apparatus is used for single-housed baboons of all ages. The device is a wire suet feeder used for birds and squirrels. It can be purchased from Walmart, Home Depot, etc. There are many sizes...

The welfare of laboratory rats and mice is sought to be optimised through adjustment of a variety of environmental factors, including light intensity and photoperiodicity. However, the fact that rodents are able to perceive ultraviolet...

The study of emotions in animals is of increasing importance to a number of disciplines such as animal welfare science and affective neuroscience. Pigs are a common farm animal species, most often reared in intensive...

The number of flooded cages per cage change cycle (14 days) was tracked and it was identified that leaks and flooding often times occurred shortly after cage changing. To reduce the occurrence of flooded caging...

This work aims to verify the role of noise and music as anxiety modulators and their relationship with ovarian hormones. For this purpose, female Wistar rats were used and treated, forming different experimental groups, with...

Free-access stalls allow sows to choose the protection of a stall or use of a shared group space. This study investigated the effect of group space width, 0.91 (SS), 2.13 (IS), and 3.05 (LS) m...

Recent studies suggest that emotional state can affect cognitive abilities of humans and non-human animals, determining biases in information processing. Negative mental states, such as anxiety or depression, induce pessimistic judgments of ambiguous stimuli. These...

In mammals, helping is preferentially provided to members of one’s own group. Yet, it remains unclear how social experience shapes pro-social motivation. We found that rats helped trapped strangers by releasing them from a restrainer...

Outdoor access is often cited as a critical component of appropriate housing for great apes in captivity, and although studies have shown that offering primates choices can improve welfare, choice to access specific areas has...

Pairing a previously neutral conditioned stimulus (CS; e.g., a tone) to an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US; e.g., a foot-shock) leads to associative learning such that the tone alone will elicit a conditioned response (e.g., freezing)...

Rats are one of the most commonly used species in research, and decades of testing have yielded a large amount of information pertaining to their experience of emotion. The aim of this review is to...

This is the third volume of discussions that took place on the Laboratory Animal Refinement & Enrichment Forum (LAREF). This forum is dedicated to the exchange of personal experiences of refining the conditions under which...

Our institution opened the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurologic Research Institute (NRI) in November of 2010. This facility houses a team of world renowned researchers working with mice and rats to develop treatments for childhood...

Clinical Laboratory Animal Medicine: An Introduction, Fourth Edition offers a user-friendly guide to the unique anatomy and physiology, care, common diseases, and treatment of small mammals and nonhuman primates. Carefully designed for ease of use...

Since there is evidence that the bottom cages can impact research, this should be a good reason to eliminate the two-tier system with its species-inappropriate bottom-tier cages.

The Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals (the Guide) recommends that terrestrial mammals be provided space free of urine and feces in which to rest. To evaluate the feasibility of meeting this...

This study analyses the preferences, as well as the lying behaviour, of sows with various types of mat in a group housing system lying area. The sows in the trial could choose between six bays...

While clinical reptile medicine as a science is in its ascendancy among veterinary surgeons and other interested groups, familiarity with the often related issue of reptilian behavioural and psychological health appears less common. Behavioural change...

On Swiss rabbit breeding farms, group-housed does are usually kept singly for 12 days around parturition to avoid pseudogravidity, double litters and deleterious fighting for nests. After this isolation phase there is usually an integration...

An adequate analgesic strategy is important to improve the postoperative recovery and welfare of laboratory rats and mice. It is desirable that the method for administering the drug is non-invasive and stress-free. We have previously...