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. 
Cox, R. J., Nol, P., Ellis, C. K. et al. 2019. Research with agricultural animals and wildlife. ILAR Journal 60(1), 66-73.

In fiscal year 2016, agricultural animals such as swine, sheep, goats, and cattle represented 10% of the 820 812 animals used in USDA-regulated research. In addition to traditional agricultural animals, research studies using captive wildlife...

Mather, J. A., Carere, C. 2019. Consider the individual: Personality and welfare in invertebrates. In: The Welfare of Invertebrate Animals. Carere, C., Mather, J. (eds), 229-245. Springer, Cham.

Personality, defined as consistent between-individual variation in clusters of behavioral traits independent of factors such as age or sex, emerges in most animal species tested so far. The number of invertebrate species discovered to have...

Schmitt, V. 2019. Implementing portable touchscreen-setups to enhance cognitive research and enrich zoo-housed animals. Journal of Zoo and Aquarium Research 7(2), 50-58.

To understand the evolutionary development of cognition, comparing the cognitive capacities of different animal species is essential. However, getting access to various species with sufficient sample sizes can be very challenging. Zoos, housing large ranges...

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...

McConnachie, E., Smid, A. M. C., Thompson, A. J. et al. 2018. Cows are highly motivated to access a grooming substrate. Biology Letters 14(8), 20180303.

In natural environments, cattle use trees and other abrasive surfaces to scratch and groom themselves. Modern indoor dairy cattle housing systems often lack appropriate grooming substrates, restricting the animals’ ability to groom. We assessed the...

Reijgwart, M. L., Vinke, C. M., Hendriksen, C. F. M. et al. 2018. An explorative study on the effect of provision of preferred and non-preferred enrichment on behavioural and physiological parameters in laboratory ferrets (Mustela putorius furo). Applied Animal Behaviour Science 203, 64-72.

Environmental enrichment is often advocated to refine animal studies. Despite the increasing use of ferrets as an animal model in biomedical research, the knowledge on effects of the provision of enrichment on these animals is...

Heimberg, C. K., Jespersen, A., Moe, R. O. 2018. Tail tip lesions in mink (Neovison vison): Effects of an additional hammock in multilevel cages. Animals 8(11), 214.

The occurrence of wounds in different anatomical regions, such as tail tip lesions, is an important welfare concern in farmed mink. This study investigated whether mechanical factors attributed to cage design in multilevel cages may...

Schou, T. M., Palme, R., Malmkvist, J. 2018. Prolonged nest building increase the reproductive outcome in American female mink. Applied Animal Behaviour Science Volume 207, 98-107.

The timing of the onset of maternal-related nest building in American mink is unknown, and it is expected that farmed mink are highly motivated to perform nest building during times with restricted access to nesting...

Stachowicz, J., Gygax, L., Hillmann, E. et al. 2018. Dairy goats use outdoor runs of high quality more regardless of the quality of indoor housing. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 208, 22-30.

For dairy goats in loose housing, access to an outdoor run has potential welfare benefits as it provides additional space, enables spatial separation and may offer items representing behavioural enrichment for the goats (e.g. brush...

Perdue, B. M., Beran, M. J., Washburn, D. A. 2018. A computerized testing system for primates: Cognition, welfare, and the Rumbaughx. Behavioural Processes 156, 37-50.

Innovations in apparatus technology come about for a variety of reasons such as the need to use the same methodology with various species, the opportunity to present dynamic and carefully controlled stimuli, the goal of...

Heyworth, C., Olivo, D. 2018. Environmental and psychological enrichment for NHPs reimagined and repurposed. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 5(4) (December), 39-43.

This article describes creative enrichment ideas for nonhuman primates, including celery stalks embedded with seeds; paper rolled into tubes, braided and filled with fruit and seeds; pineapple crowns loaded with treats; dry spaghetti noodles coated...

Volkmann, J. L., Evans, C. A., Buckmaster, C. 2018. Pigeons: Flying to new heights. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 6(1) (March), 33-34.

When singly or pair housed in cages, pigeons have a relatively small area in which to walk and stretch or flap their wings. More space is required to allow pigeons to be housed in numbers...

Kornum, A. L., Röcklinsberg, H., Gjerris, M. 2017. The concept of behavioural needs in contemporary fur science: do we know what American mink (Mustela vison) really need? Animal Welfare 26(2), 151-164.

This paper discusses the ethical implications of applying the concept of behavioural needs to captive animals. This is done on the basis of analysing the scientific literature on farmed mink and their possible need for...

Samuelson, M. M., Lauderdale, L. K., Pulis, K. et al. 2017. Olfactory enrichment in California sea lions (Zalophus californianus): An effective tool for captive welfare? Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 20(1), 75-85.

In the wild, California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) are exposed to a wide variety of sensory information, which cannot be replicated in captive environments. Therefore, unique procedures are necessary for maintaining physiological and psychological health...

Zobel, G., Neave, H., Henderson, H. et al. 2017. Calves use an automated brush and a hanging rope when pair-housed. Animals 7(11), 84.

Calf housing often only meets the basic needs of calves, but there is a growing interest in providing enrichments. This study described the behaviour of calves when they were given the opportunity to interact with...

Palmer, S. 2017. Rescue-Enrich-Release: The environmental enrichment program for three species of captive primates at Colobus. Canopy 17(2), 27-30.

It is widely known that the psychological wellbeing of captive animals can become compromised by a captive environment that lacks proper environmental stimulation. Environmental enrichment programs have become the norm in captive environments yet research...

Alligood, C. A., Dorey, N. R., Mehrkam, L. R. et al. 2017. Applying behavior-analytic methodology to the science and practice of environmental enrichment in zoos and aquariums. Zoo Biology 36(3), 175–185.

Environmental enrichment in zoos and aquariums is often evaluated at two overlapping levels: published research and day‐to‐day institutional record keeping. Several authors have discussed ongoing challenges with small sample sizes in between‐groups zoological research and...

Nelson Slater, M., Hauber, M. E. 2017. Olfactory enrichment and scent cue associative learning in captive birds of prey. Zoo Biology 36(2), 120–126.

As the use of enrichment in zoos has become a standardized husbandry practice, the continued improvement of enrichment programs should be concomitant with empirical validation of those practices. The role of scent as enrichment remains...

Carlson, A., Allen, C., Skoumbourdis, E. et al. 2017. Cooked food for non-human primates: A discussion by the Laboratory Animal Refinement & Enrichment Forum. Animal Technology and Welfare 16(2), 124-126.

"Do any of you give cooked food like pasta, potatoes or vegetables to non-human primates? What’s your experience? Do the animals benefit from cooked food; do they like it; does it affect their health in...

Coleman, K., Novak, M. A. 2017. Environmental enrichment in the 21st century. ILAR Journal 58(2), 295-307.

More than a quarter of a century has elapsed since the Animal Welfare Act mandated that research facilities develop and follow a plan to promote the psychological well-being of captive primates. Since passage of this...

Meagher, R. K., Campbell, D. L. M., Mason, G. J. 2017. Boredom-like states in mink and their behavioural correlates: A replicate study. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 197, 112-119.

Scientists and laypeople have long expressed concern that animals in non-enriched, unchanging environments might experience boredom. However, this had attracted little empirical study: the state is difficult to assess without verbal self-reports, and spontaneous behavioural...

Mandel, R., Nicol, C. J. 2017. Re-direction of maternal behaviour in dairy cows. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 195, 24-31.

In the milk producing industry, most aspects of maternal behaviour are discouraged, but milk production is actively maintained in the absence of the calf. The process of milk let down, is mediated, at least partly...

Horvath, K., Fernandez, M., Miller-Cushon, E. K. 2017. The effect of feeding enrichment in the milk-feeding stage on the cognition of dairy calves in a T-maze. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 187, 8-14.

In many species, environmental complexity is known to affect cognitive development, yet it is common to house dairy calves individually in restrictive environments. The hypothesis of this study was that providing calves with simple nutritional...

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...

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...