Carbon dioxide (CO2) is commonly used to kill laboratory rats. Rats find CO2 aversive and aversion varies between individuals, indicating that rats vary in CO2 sensitivity. Healthy humans experience feelings of anxiety at concentrations similar...
A simple but reliable and safe anaesthetic procedure is required for surgical interventions in small rodents. Combined ketamine and xylazine injections are often used in rats for less invasive surgery, possibly with spontaneous breathing and...
There is a growing interest in the use of voluntarily displayed ongoing behaviours in laboratory animals to assess the pain experience. In rats, two behavioural pain scales, the Rat Grimace Scale (RGS, a facial expression...
Social play is associated with the experience of positive emotions in higher vertebrates and may be used as a measure of animal welfare. Altering motivation to play (e.g., through short-term social isolation) can temporarily affect...
This study reports the advantage of a novel technique employing a motorised dental burr to assist laminectomy over the conventional manual technique at T10-T11 vertebra level in a rat model of spinal cord injury. Twenty-four...
Laboratory rat welfare is critically influenced by laboratory animal personnel through their implementation, or lack of implementation, of various enrichment techniques. One such promising technique is heterospecific play, or “rat tickling”, which mimics aspects of...
Our prior work showed that exposing single housed rats to intermittent physical stress (IPS) in mid-adolescence (PD35-46) led to increased risk-taking/decreased anxiety behaviour in adulthood, as indexed by their greater willingness to explore the open-arms...
The current study tested the effect of voluntary running on future anxiety-like behavior, physiological response to stress, and ethanol intake/preference, while including a chronically stressed group and healthy group housed conspecifics. When given concurrently, voluntary...
Social housing has been shown to attenuate the motivation for cocaine in female, but not male rats. Here we investigate the potential mechanisms mediating the effect of social housing on the response to methamphetamine (METH)...
An animal health program involves identification of health conditions, as well as treatment and disposition of rodents. In most facilities with a large rodent population, the initial identification of health conditions is typically accomplished by...