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. 
Buenhombre, J., Daza-Cardona, E. A., Sousa, P. et al. 2023. Structural environmental enrichment and the way it is offered influence cognitive judgement bias and anxiety-like behaviours in zebrafish. Animal Cognition 26, 563–577.

Environmental enrichment in zebrafish generally reduces anxiety-related behaviours, improves learning in maze trials and increases health and biological fitness. However, certain types of enrichment or certain conditions induce the opposite effects. Therefore, it is essential...

Fontana, B. D., Alnassar, N., Parker, M. O. 2023. Transgenerational effects of early-life stress on anxiety behavior in zebrafish (Danio rerio). Behavioural Processes 208, 104874.

Early-life adversity impacts on anxiety-related behaviors in adulthood. The effects of such adversity not only affect the animal itself, but can be passed on transgenerationally. Pervasive effects of experimentally-induced early-life stress (ELS) have been documented...

Olczak, K., Penar, W., Nowicki, J. et al. 2023. The role of sound in livestock farming—Selected aspects. Animals 13(14), 2307.

To ensure the optimal living conditions of farm animals, it is essential to understand how their senses work and the way in which they perceive their environment. Most animals have a different hearing range compared...

Stephenson, E., Haskell, M. J. 2022. The use of a “go/go” cognitive bias task and response to a novel object to assess the effect of housing enrichment in sheep (Ovis aries). Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 25(1), 62-74.

It is widely acknowledged that environmental enrichment can improve animals’ welfare and emotional state. This study used cognitive bias and response to a novel object to assess the effect of enriched housing on emotional state...

Fehrenbach, L. A., Adekanye, A. A., Palillo, M. B. et al. 2022. Internal temperatures of packaging for overnight cross-country shipping of zebrafish (Danio rerio). Comparative Medicine 72(3), 195-203.

As the use of zebrafish (Danio rerio) as a research model continues to rise, so too will the shipping and sharing of zebrafish strains across collaborating institutions. If done incorrectly, shipping can result in significant...

Mason, G. J., Lavery, J. M. 2022. What is it like to be a bass? Red herrings, fish pain and the study of animal sentience. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 9, 788289.

Debates around fishes’ ability to feel pain concern sentience: do reactions to tissue damage indicate evaluative consciousness (conscious affect), or mere nociception? Thanks to Braithwaite’s research leadership, and concerns that current practices could compromise welfare...

Mayes, B. T., Tait, L. A., Cowley, F. C. et al. 2022. Stocking density, restricted trough space, and implications for sheep behaviour and biological functioning. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 9, 965635.

Stocking density and trough space allowance can potentially impact sheep welfare during live export voyages. The aim of this study was to assess the welfare implications for sheep housed at five allometric stocking densities, with...

Gilmour, K. M., Bard, B. 2022. Social buffering of the stress response: Insights from fishes. Biology Letters 18(10), 20220332.

Social buffering of stress refers to the effect of a social partner in reducing the cortisol or corticosterone response to a stressor. It has been well studied in mammals, particularly those that form pair bonds...

Ramos, J., Balasch, J. C., Tort, L. 2021. About welfare and stress in the early stages of fish. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 8, 634434.

In conclusion, the investigations carried out up to now demonstrate that during the early stages fish show high sensitivity to many types of stressors involving an array of responses to overcome alterations that could affect...

Bolt, L. M. 2021. Agonistic vocalization behaviour in the male ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta). Primates 62(2), 417–430.

Vocalizations are used by group-living animals as aggressive and submissive signals during agonistic interactions, and are also used to maintain dominance hierarchies in many species. For gregarious strepsirrhines with large vocal repertoires and differentiated dominance...

Sørensen, D., Cloutier, S., Gaskill, B. (Eds.). 2021. Animal-centric Care and Management - Enhancing Refinement in Biomedical Research. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.

The concept of the 3Rs (Refinement, Reduction and Replacement) has been used as a framework for improving the welfare of laboratory animals for the last half century. By establishing an animal-centric view on housing and...

Burbano Lombana, D. A., Macrì, S., Porfiri, M. 2021. Collective emotional contagion in zebrafish. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 15, 730372.

Seeking to match our emotional state with one of those around us is known as emotional contagion-a fundamental biological process that underlies social behavior across several species and taxa. While emotional contagion has been traditionally...

Campbell, D. L. M., Lee, C. 2021. A perspective on strategic enrichment for brain development: Is this the key to animal happiness? Frontiers in Veterinary Science 8, 720422.

Livestock animals are sentient beings with cognitive and emotional capacities and their brain development, similar to humans and other animal species, is affected by their surrounding environmental conditions. Current intensive production systems, through the restrictions...

Angiulli, E., Pagliara, V., Cioni, C. et al. 2020. Increase in environmental temperature affects exploratory behaviour, anxiety and social preference in Danio rerio. Scientific Reports 10(1), 5385.

The aim of this work is to investigate the effect of a temperature increase on the behaviour of adult zebrafish (Danio rerio) maintained for 21 days at 34 °C (treatment) and 26 °C (control). The temperatures chosen...

Tan, S. L. T., Handasyde, K. A., Rault, J.-L. et al. 2020. Insensitivity to reward shifts in zebrafish (Danio rerio) and implications for assessing affective states. Animal Cognition 23(1), 87–100

Theory and empirical findings predict that individuals in a negative affective state are more sensitive to unexpected reward loss and less sensitive to unexpected reward gain compared to individuals in a neutral or positive affective...

Fife-Cook, I., Franks, B. 2019. Positive welfare for fishes: Rationale and areas for future study. Fishes 4(2), 31.

Traditional animal welfare paradigms have focused on maintaining physical health and mitigating negative impacts to wellbeing. Recently, however, the field has increasingly recognized the importance of positive welfare (i.e., mental and physical states that exceed...

Silva, P. F., de Leaniz, C. G., Luchiari, A. C. 2019. Fear contagion in zebrafish: A behaviour affected by familiarity. Animal Behaviour 153, 95-103.

Emotional contagion has recently been described in fish but whether it is affected by familiarity is not known. We tested whether the sight of a distressed conspecific elicited fear in zebrafish, Danio rerio, and whether...

Lambert, H., Carder, G., D'Cruze, N. 2019. Given the cold shoulder: A review of the scientific literature for evidence of reptile sentience. Animals 9(10), 821.

We searched a selection of the scientific literature to document evidence for, and explorations into reptile sentience. The intention of this review was to highlight; (1) to what extent reptile capability for emotions have been...

Eichner, M., Garcia, K. 2019. Increase in morbidity and mortality in a shipment of red-eared slider turtles (Trachemys scripta elegans). Laboratory Animals 53(6), 634–640.

A cohort of captive-bred red-eared slider turtles, Trachemys scripta, was received from a commercial vendor. Shortly after arrival, several turtles presented as lethargic with subjectively pale skin and multifocal areas of cotton-like tufts in the...

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...

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...

Monreal-Pawlowsky, T., Marco-Cabedo, V., Manteca, X. et al. 2017. Environmental enrichment facilitates release and survival of an injured loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) after ten years in captivity. Journal of Zoo and Aquarium Research 5(4), 182-186.

In June 2006 a loggerhead sea turtle (Caretta caretta) was admitted to a rescue centre on the Mediterranean coast with severe fishing net entanglement in its fore right flipper. The flipper could not be saved...

Barnard, S., Matthews, L. R., Messori, S., et al. 2015. Behavioural reactivity of ewes and lambs during partial and total social isolation. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 163, 89-97.

This work investigated the differences in the reactivity of Sarda (primiparous n = 18, multiparous n = 17) and Dorset (multiparous n = 8) breeds of sheep and their singleton lambs to two challenging test...

Anderson, C., Yngvesson, J., Boissy, A. et al. 2015. Behavioural expression of positive anticipation for food or opportunity to play in lambs. Behavioural Processes 113, 152-158.

Anticipatory behaviours may serve a useful tool in studying positive emotional states in animals. This study aimed to investigate if lambs express anticipatory behaviours for opportunities to play or a food reward and if these...