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...

Popper, A. N., Sisneros, J. A. 2022. The sound world of zebrafish: A critical review of hearing assessment. Zebrafish 19(2), 37-48.

Zebrafish, like all fish species, use sound to learn about their environment. Thus, human-generated (anthropogenic) sound added to the environment has the potential to disrupt the detection of biologically relevant sounds, alter behavior, impact fitness...

Windsor, P. A. 2022. Role of topical anaesthesia in pain management of farm animals, a changing paradigm. Animals 12(18), 2459.

Field evidence indicates that livestock producers are motivated by access to products that readily deliver pain management during husbandry interventions and, more recently, viral epidermal infectious diseases, including FMD. There has been impressive adoption in...

Coleman, K., Shapiro, S. J. (Eds.). 2021. Behavioral Biology of Laboratory Animals (1st ed). CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.

This 30-chapter volume informs students and professionals about the behavioral biology of animals commonly housed in laboratory and other captive settings. Each species evolved under specific environmental conditions, resulting in unique behavioral patterns, many of...

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...

Wilson-Welder, J. H., Frank, A. T. 2021. Use of food enrichment for medication delivery in large groups of sheep. Laboratory Animal Science Professional 9(3) (May/June), 40-43.

In a 2018 AALAS webinar on Sheep and Goat Analgesia, Dr. Susie Vogel, a small ruminant expert, introduced the concept of getting sheep and goats to willingly take medication by putting it in a tasty...

Neff, E.P. 2020. Where the wild zebrafish are. Lab Animal 49(11), 305–309.

Journeying into the field to study a model organism in its natural habitats. “Seeing them in the wild and seeing what kind of substrates they are on has really helped inform that for us, and...

Shelton, D. S., Shelton, S. G., Daniel, D. K. et al. 2020. Collective behavior in wild zebrafish. Zebrafish 17(4), 243-252.

Anthropogenic change is expected to alter environments at alarming rates. To predict the impact of modified environments on social behavior, we must study the relationship between environmental features and collective behavior in a genetically tractable...

Bellini, L., De Benedictis, G. M. 2019. Effect of three opioid-based analgesic protocols on the perioperative autonomic-mediated cardiovascular response in sheep. Laboratory Animals 53(5), 491–499.

Few reports evaluate the clinical effects of opioids in sheep during experimental surgical procedures. Catecholamine-mediated haemodynamic changes resulting from surgical noxious stimulation are blunted by opioids. The aim of this study was to evaluate the...

Sundin, J., Morgan, R., Finnøen, M. H. et al. 2019. On the observation of wild zebrafish (Danio rerio) in India. Zebrafish 16(6), 546-553.

Zebrafish is one of the world's most widely used laboratory species, and it is utilized to answer important research questions in disparate fields such as biomedicine, genetics, developmental biology, pharmacology, toxicology, physiology, and evolution. Despite...

Stillman, M. W., Whittaker, A. L. 2019. Use and efficacy of analgesic agents in sheep (Ovis aries) used in biomedical research. JAALAS 58(6), 755–766.

Sheep (Ovis aries) are widely used as large animal models in biomedical research. However, current literature on the use of analgesics in sheep generally focuses on an industry or farm level of use. This structured...

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...

Straticò, P., Varasano, V., Suriano, R. et al. 2018. Analgesic effects of intravenous flunixin and intrafunicular lidocaine or their combination for castration of lambs. Veterinary Record Open 5(1), e000266.

Objective: To analyse the effectiveness of intrafunicular lidocaine and intravenous flunixin for reducing pain and signs of stress in lambs undergoing surgical castration. Design: Randomised controlled trial. Setting: One university teaching hospital in Italy. Participants...

Warwick, C., Arena, P., Lindley, S. et al. 2013. Assessing reptile welfare using behavioural criteria. In Practice 35(3), 123-131.

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...