Farm animals can socially learn to trust a human after observing that human handling a familiar conspecific gently, even if they never positively interacted with the human themselves. This study aimed to evaluate whether pigs...
A growing spotlight on insect welfare as research subjects, fodder for vertebrate animals, and patients for veterinarians highlights the need to establish humane euthanasia methods for these species. An insect of increasing commercial importance is...
Animal play encompasses a variety of aspects, with kinematic and social aspects being particularly prevalent in mammalian play behaviour. While the developmental effects of play have been increasingly documented in recent decades, understanding the specific...
The Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals recommends mice be pair or group housed and provided with nesting materials. These provisions support social interactions and are also critical for thermoregulatory behaviors such...
Many research groups explore the regulation of hibernation or compare the physiology of heterothermic mammals between the torpid and aroused, euthermic states. Current methods for monitoring torpor (for example, infrared cameras, body temperature or heart-rate...
Growing evidence reveals notable phenotypic plasticity in cognition among teleost fishes. One compelling example is the positive impact of enriched environments on learning performance. Most studies on this effect have focused on juvenile or later...
Voluntary oral drug administration using sweet substances promotes rodents’ therapeutic compliance while reducing stress induced by forced drug administration. We aimed to test whether rats would willingly eat strawberry jam or condensed milk from a...
Rats are a commonly used animal model for the study of the pathogenesis and novel treatments of glaucoma, which is induced experimentally using invasive, painful procedures. Peribulbar anaesthesia (PBA) is frequently used in people and...
Melatonin (ML) and dexmedetomidine (DM) are used separately as anesthetic premedication or as an anesthetic in humans and laboratory animals. In this study, we aimed to investigate the anesthetic properties of both drugs combined. The...
Immunodeficient NSG mice are reported to be less responsive to buprenorphine analgesia. Here, we used NSG mice to compare the efficacy of the commonly used dose of carprofen (5 mg/kg) with 5 and 10 times...