Whether social isolation of adult rats under standard laboratory conditions produces significant long-term alterations in behavior and physiology is unclear. In the present study, male Sprague–Dawley rats were singly or paired-housed for 10 wk. During...
Housing enrichment for rodents continues to be a discussion topic within the animal care community. The objective of this study was to determine the extent to which a complex housing environment affects heart rate, blood...
In various toxicological studies, single housing of rodents is preferred to standardize for regulatory purposes. However, housing conditions can have severe, often underestimated, impact on results in toxicological examinations. As different husbandry conditions have been...
Social interactions during adolescence are important especially for neuronal development and behavior. We recently showed that positive emotions induced by repeated tickling could modulate fear-related behaviors and sympatho-adrenal stress responses. In the present study, we...
In mammals, helping is preferentially provided to members of one’s own group. Yet, it remains unclear how social experience shapes pro-social motivation. We found that rats helped trapped strangers by releasing them from a restrainer...
Handling small animals for veterinary and experimental procedures can negatively affect animal wellbeing. We hypothesized that playful handling (tickling) would decrease stress associated with repeated injections in adult laboratory rats, especially those with prior tickling...
Environmental enrichment in rodents may improve animal well-being but can affect neurologic development, immune system function, and aging. We tested the hypothesis that wood block enrichment affects the interpretation of traditional and transcriptomic endpoints in...
This work aims to verify the role of noise and music as anxiety modulators and their relationship with ovarian hormones. For this purpose, female Wistar rats were used and treated, forming different experimental groups, with...
The number of flooded cages per cage change cycle (14 days) was tracked and it was identified that leaks and flooding often times occurred shortly after cage changing. To reduce the occurrence of flooded caging...
We investigated if there were any negative effects on the behaviour and physiology of rats housed in groups of five in two types of enriched cages and compared them with paired-housed rats housed in traditional...