Some experts suggest that sedation of laboratory rodents with isoflurane before euthanasia with carbon dioxide (CO2) is a humane alternative to euthanasia with CO2 alone, but little research has compared aversion with these agents. Albino...
The effects of early environmental enrichment (EE) when solving a simple spatial task in adult male rats were assessed. After weaning, rats were housed in pairs in enriched or standard cages (EE and control groups)...
Studies of animal welfare in laboratory animals have historically relied on the measurement of negative indicators rather than the assessment of positive indicators of welfare. Practical methods of welfare assessment are required to allow refinement...
The RSPCA/UFAW Rodent (and now Rabbit) Welfare Group held a one-day meeting on 1 November 2016 at the University of Edinburgh and was attended by 70 delegates. Presentation topics included refinements in blood sampling rodents...
The environment that laboratory animals are housed in should reflect their natural habitats in a manner that can satisfy their innate physiological and behavioural needs. This includes nest building, hiding, exploring and foraging. Providing environmental...
The transportation of animals from supplier to experimental facility is one of the biggest stressors to animals in research. Transportation unavoidably causes stress and when the animals arrive at the testing facility they require a...
Since rats lack a gall bladder, they are an ideal model for investigating continuous biliary excretion and biotransformation. The design and implementation of a modified tail cuff and cannula system introduced at Covance permits the...
Using an existing gang cage designed for ferrets, we developed a version that would be suitable for housing rats. Caging consisted of 3 floors with a combined floor area of 11620m, connected by 2 ladders...
There are varying methods used for animal restraint and angle of injection. It remains unclear whether one method is more accurate than others. The primary objectives were to examine whether inverted restraint of rats resulted...
Metabolic cages are a type of housing used in biomedical research. Metabolic cage housing has been demonstrated to elicit behavioural and physiological changes in rodents housed within them. The nature of this effect has been...