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Laboratory environments and rodents’ behavioural needs: a review
By J P Balcombe, Ph.D.
Summary
Laboratory housing conditions have significant physiological and psychological effects on rodents, raising both scientific and humane concerns. Published studies of rats, mice and
other rodents were reviewed to document behavioural and psychological problems
attributable to predominant laboratory housing conditions. Studies indicate that rats and
mice value opportunities to take cover, build nests, explore, gain social contact, and exercise
some control over their social milieu, and that the inability to satisfy these needs is
physically and psychologically detrimental, leading to impaired brain development and
behavioural anomalies (e.g. stereotypies). To the extent that space is a means to gain access
to such resources, spatial confinement likely exacerbates these deficits. Adding environ-
mental ‘enrichments’ to small cages reduces but does not eliminate these problems, and I
argue that substantial changes in housing and husbandry conditions would be needed to
further reduce them.
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