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Full-Text Articles in Animal Experimentation and Research
Toward Genuine Rodent Welfare: Response To Reviewer Comments, Jonathan P. Balcombe
Toward Genuine Rodent Welfare: Response To Reviewer Comments, Jonathan P. Balcombe
Laboratory Experiments Collection
I’m grateful to the editors for soliciting critiques of my commentary and for the opportunity to respond. Because one of the respondents (Patterson-Kane, 2010/this issue) does not take issue with the main points of my article, whereas the other (Blanchard, 2010/this issue) does, I focus my remarks here mostly on Blanchard’s critique.
Laboratory Rodent Welfare: Thinking Outside The Cage, Jonathan P. Balcombe
Laboratory Rodent Welfare: Thinking Outside The Cage, Jonathan P. Balcombe
Laboratory Experiments Collection
This commentary presents the case against housing rats and mice in laboratory cages; the commentary bases its case on their sentience, natural history, and the varied detriments of laboratory conditions. The commentary gives 5 arguments to support this position: (a) rats and mice have a high degree of sentience and can suffer, (b) laboratory environments cause suffering, (c) rats and mice in the wild have discrete behavioral needs, (d) rats and mice bred for many generations in the laboratory retain these needs, and (e) these needs are not met in laboratory cages.
Impact Of Cage Size And Enrichment (Tube And Shelf) On Heart Rate Variability In Rats, Anna E. Brauner, David T. Kurjiaka, Angela Ibragimov, Ann L. Baldwin
Impact Of Cage Size And Enrichment (Tube And Shelf) On Heart Rate Variability In Rats, Anna E. Brauner, David T. Kurjiaka, Angela Ibragimov, Ann L. Baldwin
Peer Reviewed Articles
Rats respond physiologically and behaviorally to environmental stressors. As cage conditions can be a stressor, it is important that experimental results acquired from caged rats are not confounded by these responses. This study determined the effects of cage size and cage enrichment (tube and shelf) on heart rate variability (HRV) in rats as a measure of stress. Electrocardiogram data were collected from 5 male Sprague-Dawley rats, each implanted with a radio-telemetric transducer to assess the ratio of the low to high frequency components of the HRV power spectrum (LF/HF). This ratio reflects the degree of sympathetic versus parasympathetic nervous activity …