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. 
Carbonara, P., Dioguardi, M., Cammarata, M. et al. 2019. Basic knowledge of social hierarchies and physiological profile of reared sea bass Dicentrarchus labrax (L.). PLOS ONE 14(1), e0208688.

The effects of social hierarchies (dominant/subordinate individuals), such as aggressiveness, feeding order, and territoriality, are some of the characteristics used for describing fish behaviour. Social hierarchy patterns are still poorly understood in European-reared sea bass...

Sánchez–Hernández, P., Krasheninnikova, A., Almunia, J. et al. 2019. Social interaction analysis in captive orcas (Orcinus orca). Zoo Biology 38(4), 323-333.

The management of socially complex species in captivity is challenging. Research on their social behavior improves our understanding of interactions in captive animals and captive-group management. We conducted a detailed analysis of social relationships shown...

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...

Clarke, T., Pluske, J. R., Miller, D. W. et al. 2018. Parity influences the demeanor of sows in group housing. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 21(1), 17-26.

Across the globe, producers are moving from individual housing to group housing for sows during gestation. Producers typically group sows of a range of parities together, although the impacts are largely unknown. This study examined...

Li, Y., Zhang, H., Johnston, L. et al. 2018. Understanding tail-biting in pigs through social network analysis. Animals 8(1), 13.

The objective of this study was to investigate the association between social structure and incidence of tail-biting in pigs. Pigs (n = 144, initial weight = 7.2 ± 1.57 kg, 4 weeks of age) were...

Coke, C., Skoumbourdis, E., Rodgers, J. C. et al. 2018. Blunting/cutting canines of adult male monkeys: A discussion by the Laboratory Animal Refinement & Enrichment Forum. Animal Technology & Welfare 17(2), 105-107.

"When you keep adult Rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) males, adult Cynomolgus (Macaca fascicularis) males or adult Vervet males (Chlorocebus pygerythrus), in the same enclosure, is it advisable to have the canines of the males blunted...

Verdon, M., Morrison, R. S., Hemsworth, P. H. 2018. Forming groups of aggressive sows based on a predictive test of aggression does not affect overall sow aggression or welfare. Behavioural Processes 150, 17-24.

This experiment examined the effects of group composition on sow aggressive behaviour and welfare. Over 6 time replicates, 360 sows (parity 1–6) were mixed into groups (10 sows per pen, 1.8 m2 /sow) composed of...

Ison, S. H., Bates, R. O., Ernst, C. W. et al. 2018. Housing, ease of handling and minimising inter-pig aggression at mixing for nursery to finishing pigs as reported in a survey of North American pork producers. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 205, 159-166.

Inter-pig aggression is a welfare issue that has undergone extensive research. Although management techniques have proven useful in minimising aggression in research settings, it is not known how often these are used on-farm. One objective...

Peden, R. S. E., Turner, S. P., Boyle, L. A. et al. 2018. The translation of animal welfare research into practice: The case of mixing aggression between pigs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 204, 1-9.

Aggression between unfamiliar pigs at mixing is a major animal welfare problem in commercial farming. It has been studied since the 1970s and remains an important topic in animal welfare research. Methods to reduce pig...

dos Santos Gauy, A. C., Pereira Boscolo, C. N., Gonçalves-de-Freitas, E. 2018. Less water renewal reduces effects on social aggression of the cichlid Pterophyllum scalare. Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 198, 121-126.

Changes in aquatic environments can affect fish behavior. Water renewal, for example, can dilute chemical signals, which are a social communication tool used by some fish species, and this dilution increases aggressive interactions in the...

Franks, B., Graham, C., Von Keyserlingk, M. A. G. 2018. Is heightened-shoaling a good candidate for positive emotional behavior in zebrafish? Animals 8(9), 152.

Zebrafish, a highly-social species of freshwater fish, are widely studied across many fields of laboratory science including developmental biology, neuroscience, and genomics. Nevertheless, as standard housing for zebrafish typically consists of small and simplistic environments...

Camerlink, I., Farish, M., D’Eath, R. B. et al. 2018. Long term benefits on social behaviour after early life socialization of piglets. Animals 8(11), 192.

Early life socialization of piglets has been shown to reduce piglet aggression at weaning, but information on sow health and long-term benefits is lacking. We aimed to assess how socialization impacts sow udder quality and...

Salazar, L. C., Ko, H.-L., Yang, C.-H. et al. 2018. Early socialisation as a strategy to increase piglets’ social skills in intensive farming conditions. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 206, 25-31.

Socialisation is a process in which animals interact with unfamiliar conspecifics, that allows them to develop their social abilities. Socialisation has been proposed as a method in pig husbandry to increase piglets’ social skills and...

White, L. J., Thomson, J. S., Pounder, K. C. et al. 2017. The impact of social context on behaviour and the recovery from welfare challenges in zebrafish, Danio rerio. Animal Behaviour 132, 189-199.

Understanding how animals experience stress in a laboratory environment is crucial for improving their welfare. Increasing numbers of fish are being used in scientific studies and further research is required to ensure appropriate conditions are...

Harvey, B. S., Dudzinski, K. M., Kuczaj, S. A. 2017. Associations and the role of affiliative, agonistic, and socio-sexual behaviors among common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). Behavioural Processes 135, 145-156.

Little is known about the specific behavioral exchanges that occur on a day-to-day basis between dyads of common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). This study assesses the proportion of time dyads spend in proximity (within ∼2...

Clegg, I. L., Rödel, H. G., Delfour, F. 2017. Bottlenose dolphins engaging in more social affiliative behaviour judge ambiguous cues more optimistically. Behavioural Brain Research 322, 115-122.

Cognitive bias tests measure variation in emotional appraisal and are validated methods to assess animals’ affective states. However, the link between social behaviours and cognitive bias has not yet been investigated. Bottlenose dolphins are a...

Bulens, A., Van Beirendonck, S., Van Thielen, J. et al. 2017. Hiding walls for fattening pigs: Do they affect behavior and performance? Applied Animal Behaviour Science 195, 32-37.

The prevalence of harmful and unwanted behavior in fattening pigs is influenced by different factors including housing. Housing may include the opportunity to hide from aggressive pen mates and this ability is related to pen...

Mesarec, N., Prevolnik Povše, M., Škorjanc, D. et al. 2017. Gangs of piglets: Welfare and growth of imprinted and guided weaners. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 195, 44-49.

Weaning stress accompanied by outburst of aggression is a critical point in pig production as it compromises piglets’ welfare and leads to poor growth rate and health problems. Therefore, a weaning methods to smoothen the...

Axelsson, H. M. K., Hansen, S. W., Loberg, J. et al. 2017. Effects of group size on behaviour, growth and occurrence of bite marks in farmed mink. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 194, 112-119.

The aims of this study were to investigate the occurrence of stereotypic behaviours and the activity level in farmed mink when group housed in climbing cages and if group housing increase aggression by assessing the...

Reimert, I., Fong, S., Rodenburg, T. B. et al. 2017. Emotional states and emotional contagion in pigs after exposure to a positive and negative treatment. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 193, 37-42.

After-effects of events that elicit an emotional state on both the animals that experienced these events and on their group members have only scarcely been studied. We investigated effects of a positive vs. negative treatment...

Turner, S. P., Nevison, I. M., Desire, S. et al. 2017. Aggressive behaviour at regrouping is a poor predictor of chronic aggression in stable social groups. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 191, 98-106.

Commercial pigs globally are routinely mixed into new social groups. This results in regrouping aggression predominantly during the first 24h which compromises welfare and productivity. Chronic aggression persists thereafter and is also undesirable. Management strategies...

Greenwood, E. C., Plush, K. J., van Wettere, W.H.E.J. et al. 2017. A novel method for the analysis of social structure allows in-depth analysis of sow rank in newly grouped sows. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 189, 29-35.

Chronic stress response in fearful animals can result in depression of growth and reproductive performance. It is therefore important to be aware of at risk animals in the herd. Thus far ‘hierarchy’ calculations have involved...

Parois, S., Larzul, C., Prunier, A. 2017. Associations between the dominance status and sexual development, skin lesions or feeding behaviour of intact male pigs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 187, 15-22.

In boars, social relationships could influence pubertal development and feeding behaviour. The objectives of the present study were to determine the relationships between behaviour (agonistic, mounting and feeding behaviours), plasma sex steroids (oestradiol, testosterone) and...

Sands, C., Evans, C., Buckmaster, C. A. 2017. The grooming sleeve: Encouraging conspecific-like behavior and strengthening the human-animal bond. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 5(2) (June), 52-53.

The act of grooming has been found to greatly decrease stress, heart rate, and cortisol levels in nonhuman primates; this decrease in stress and cortisol is seen in the animal being groomed, as well as...

Daoudi, S., Badihi, G., Buchanan-Smith, H. 2017. Is mixed-species living cognitively enriching? Enclosure use and welfare in two captive groups of tufted capuchins (Sapajus apella) and squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus). Animal Behavior and Cognition 4(1).

Non-human primates have complex relationships with conspecifics and also other animals with whom they share their habitat in the wild. Some primates, such as capuchin monkeys (Sapajus apella) and squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus), naturally associate...