Liedtke, J., Schneider, J. M. 2017. Social makes smart: Rearing conditions affect learning and social behaviour in jumping spiders. Animal Cognition 20(6), 1093–1106.
There is a long-standing debate as to whether social or physical environmental aspects drive the evolution and development of cognitive abilities. Surprisingly few studies make use of developmental plasticity to compare the effects of these...
Lewbart, G. A., Zachariah, T. T. 2023. Aquatic and terrestrial invertebrate welfare. Animals 13(21), 3375.
Invertebrates are a diverse group of animals that make up the majority of the animal kingdom and encompass a wide array of species with varying adaptations and characteristics. Invertebrates are found in nearly all of...
Lefebvre, E., Granon, S., Chauveau, F. 2020. Social context increases ultrasonic vocalizations during restraint in adult mice. Animal Cognition 23(2), 351–359.
Adult mice emit many ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) during social interaction tasks, but only a few studies have yet reported USVs in stressed adult mice. Our aim was to study which experimental conditions favor USV emission...
Lang, B., Kahnau, P., Hohlbaum, K. et al. 2023. Challenges and advanced concepts for the assessment of learning and memory function in mice. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 17.
The mechanisms underlying the formation and retrieval of memories are still an active area of research and discussion. Manifold models have been proposed and refined over the years, with most assuming a dichotomy between memory...
Krueger, J. C., Boecker, M., Gauggel, S. et al. 2023. Using photographs for rating severity degrees of clinical appearance in research mice enables valid discrimination of extreme but not mild and moderate conditions: A pilot study. PLOS ONE 18(11),
To ensure good animal welfare in laboratory research and in stockbreeding severity ratings of the animals´ wellbeing are essential. The current study investigated how valid raters can evaluate different severity degrees of clinical appearance and...
Krönke, F., Xu, L. 2023. Sensory stimulation as a means of sustained enhancement of well-being in leopard geckos, Eublepharis macularius (Eublepharidae, Squamata). Animals 13(23), 3595.
Although the private keeping of reptiles has boomed in most western countries since the millennium, studies dealing with the recognition and promotion of welfare in these reptiles seem to represent a blind spot of scientific...
Kravchuk, L., Watson, C. 2020. Corn snakes can behaviorally enhance crypsis by choosing complex backgrounds and substrate. Animal Behavior and Cognition 7(1), 39–48.
Many organisms have evolved coloration that increases their likelihood of survival. Crypsis is one such mechanism employed by many animals to avoid detection by blending into their habitat. By remaining unseen, these animals can enhance...
Klabukov, I., Shestakova, V., Krasilnikova, O. et al. 2023. Refinement of animal experiments: Replacing traumatic methods of laboratory animal marking with non-invasive alternatives. Animals 13(22), 3452.
Reliable methods for identifying rodents play an important role in ensuring the success of preclinical studies. However, animal identification remains a trivial laboratory routine that is not often discussed, despite the fact that more than...
Jones, C. E., Riha, P. D., Gore, A. C. et al. 2014. Social transmission of Pavlovian fear: Fear-conditioning by-proxy in related female rats. Animal Cognition 17(3), 827–834.
Pairing a previously neutral conditioned stimulus (CS; e.g., a tone) to an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US; e.g., a foot-shock) leads to associative learning such that the tone alone will elicit a conditioned response (e.g., freezing)...