Guinea pigs are difficult to oral gavage dose. Previous adverse effects from this dosing method, using rigid catheters, had caused an earlier endpoint to studies and loss of data. We therefore developed a prototype gag...
The ideal animal model would contribute no confounding variables in experimental science. Variables affect experimental design resulting in increased animal use or repeated studies. We demonstrated a simple refinement which may reduce the number of...
Environmental enrichment can be defined as altering the living environment of captive animals in order to provide them with opportunities to express more of their natural behavioral repertoire. The challenge of providing effective enrichment in...
Clinical Laboratory Animal Medicine: An Introduction, Fourth Edition offers a user-friendly guide to the unique anatomy and physiology, care, common diseases, and treatment of small mammals and nonhuman primates. Carefully designed for ease of use...
In practice, consideration is given to providing most of the species used in research,testing and education withsome level of environmental enrichment. However, although the current level of awareness and understanding about the benefits of environmental...
Although the guinea pig (Cavia porcellus) has been used in research for over a century and remains one of the most prevalent AWA covered species today, very little has been elucidated in the literature about...
The standard microisolation caging for guinea pigs, Cavia porcellus, allows for group housing up to a combined weight of 350 g. However, as mandated by the USDA, research facilities must socially house guinea pigs with...
For infectious disease studies, assessment of feline health is traditionally limited to metrics such as body temperature (BT), change in body weight (BW), and clinical signs (CS). Recently, behavioral ethograms designed for assessment of rabbits...
Current housing guidelines for laboratory rodents include recommendations for enrichment. Working with guinea pigs, we have developed an open-field enrichment paradigm that provides several aspects of this species' natural environment. These naturalistic aspects include access...
The study of laboratory animal behavior has increased steadily over the last decade, with expanding emphasis on a variety of commonly used species. In the United States, this trend was initially focused on species for...