Welfare Assessment

Includes methods and protocols to monitor or assess animal health, pain, and other emotions.

Lambeth, S. P., Schapiro, S. J., Bernacky, B. J. et al. 2013. Establishing 'quality of life' parameters using behavioural guidelines for humane euthanasia of captive non-human primates. Animal Welfare 22(4) 429-435.

Chronic pain and distress are universally accepted conditions that may adversely affect an animal’s quality of life (QOL) and lead to the humane euthanasia of an animal. At most research institutions and zoological parks in...

Rock, M. L., Karas, A. Z., Gallo, M. S. et al. 2014. Housing condition and nesting experience do not affect the time to integrate to nest test (TINT). Animal Welfare 23(4), 381-385.

Managing and assessing well-being in laboratory mice (Mus musculus) is both challenging and necessary. Assessments intended to detect negative welfare states in mice are usually performed via observation of animals in the home cage, but...

Rock, M. L., Rodriguez, K., Karas, A. Z. et al. 2014. The time-to-integrate-to-nest test as an indicator of wellbeing in laboratory mice. JAALAS 53(1), 24-28.

Minimizing and alleviating pain and distress in laboratory mice without compromising the methodologic integrity of research is a crucial goal. However, current methods for welfare assessment in mice are not well suited to cageside checks...

Rushen, J., de Passillé, A. M., Appleby, M. C. et al. 2014. Alone or together: A risk assessment approach to group housing. In: Dilemmas in Animal Welfare. Appleby, M. C., Weary, D. M., Sandøe, P. (eds), 169-187. CAB International, Oxfordshire, UK.

The question of whether it is better to house animals in groups rather than alone deals with the unresolved issues at the heart of animal welfare. In particular, we need to be able to rank...

Kalliokoski, O., Teilmann, A. C., Jacoben, K. R. et al. 2014. Do singly housed male mice get lonely? Evidence of depressive states after short-term single housing of BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice. American Association for =

Through behavioral and preference studies we know that mice prefer company. Laboratory mice should thus never be housed alone, if a viable option exists. Yet single housing is a fairly common practice, in particular with...

Whittaker, A. L., Howarth, G. S. 2014. Use of spontaneous behaviour measures to assess pain in laboratory rats and mice: How

The understanding and recognition of pain in laboratory rats and mice has advanced considerably in recent times. However, there is evidence that despite these advances, analgesics are still relatively underutilised in these species. One possible...

Turner, P. V., Viscardi, A., Lawli, P. et al. 2014. Evaluation of analgesic efficacy in piglets using a novel pig grimace s

There is a critical lack of information surrounding methods to improve the wellbeing of piglets undergoing painful procedures. It is not uncommon for piglets to undergo potentially painful procedures without anesthesia or analgesia, particularly for...

Kuhnea, F., Hlerb, J. C., Struweb, R. 2014. Emotions in dogs being petted by a familiar or unfamiliar person: Validating

Although physical human–dog interactions have an important influence on the human–dog relationship, few studies have proposed the key factors of physical human–dog contact affecting the well-being of dogs. Therefore, our aim was to investigate the...

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