Refinement Database

Database on Refinement of Housing, Husbandry, Care, and Use of Animals in Research

This database, created in 2000, is updated every four months with newly published scientific articles, books, and other publications related to improving or safeguarding the welfare of animals used in research.

Tips for using the database:

  • This landing page displays all of the publications in the database.
  • Use the drop-down menus to filter these publications by Animal Type, Setting, and/or Topic.
  • Clicking on a parent category (e.g., Rodent) will include publications relating to all the items in that category (e.g., Chinchilla, Gerbil, Guinea Pig, etc.).
  • You may also add a keyword to further narrow your search.
  • Please note that at this time, only publications dated 2010 or later (with some exceptions) can be filtered by Animal Type and Topic, and only publications dated 2020 or later (with some exceptions) can be filtered by Setting. Most publications older than 2010 can only be searched by keyword. 
Harvey, A. M., Beausoleil, N. J., Ramp, D. et al. 2023. Mental experiences in wild animals: Scientifically validating measureable welfare indicators in free-roaming horses. Animals 13(9), 1507.

The mental experiences of animals are what characterises their welfare status. The Five Domains Model for assessing welfare aligns with the understanding that physical and mental states are linked. Following measurement of indicators within each...

Seganfreddo, S., Fornasiero, D., De Santis, M. et al. 2023. A pilot study on behavioural and physiological indicators of emotions in donkeys. Animals 13(9), 1466.

Recognizing animal emotions is critical to their welfare and can lead to a better relationship with humans and the environment, especially in a widespread species like the donkey, which is often prone to welfare issues...

Verspeek, J., Stevens, J. M. G. 2023. Behavioral and physiological response to inequity in bonobos (Pan paniscus). American Journal of Primatology 85(1), e23455.

Inequity aversion (IA), the affective, cognitive, and behavioral response to inequitable outcomes, allows individuals to avoid exploitation and therefore stabilizes cooperation. The presence of IA varies across animal species, which has stimulated research to investigate...

Brown, C., Schluessel, V. 2023. Smart sharks: A review of chondrichthyan cognition. Animal Cognition 26(1), 175–188.

450 million years of evolution have given chondrichthyans (sharks, rays and allies) ample time to adapt perfectly to their respective everyday life challenges and cognitive abilities have played an important part in that process. The...

Clark, F. E. 2023. In the zone: Towards a comparative study of flow state in primates. Animal Behavior and Cognition 10(1), 62–88.

Flow is an altered state of feeling ‘in the zone’ when fully absorbed in a challenge and is associated with positive affective state (feelings). Despite almost five decades of research, Flow has not yet been...

Farnsworth, K. D., Elwood, R. W. 2023. Why it hurts: With freedom comes the biological need for pain. Animal Cognition 26(4), 1259–1275.

We argue that pain is not needed to protect the body from damage unless the organism is able to make free choices in action selection. Then pain (including its affective and evaluative aspects) provides a...

Szabo, B., Ringler, E. 2023. Fear of the new? Geckos hesitate to attack novel prey, feed near objects and enter a novel space. Animal Cognition 26(2), 537–549.

Neophobia, the fear of novelty, is an ecologically important response which enables animals to avoid potentially harmful situations. Neophobia is a cognitive process by which individuals distinguish novelty from familiarity. In this study, we aimed...

Lambert, H., Elwin, A., D’Cruze, N. 2022. Frog in the well: A review of the scientific literature for evidence of amphibian sentience. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 247, 105559.

Millions of amphibians are traded annually around the world for the exotic pet industry. Their experience during both trade, and in captivity as pets, leads to numerous animal welfare issues. The poor welfare of many...

Hamlaoui, A., Keeling, L., Burman, O. et al. 2022. Investigating attentional scope as a novel indicator of emotional state in animals. Scientific Reports 12(1), 17452.

In humans, contrasting emotional states can lead to a broadening or narrowing of attentional scope. Whether this is also the case in animals has yet to be investigated. If confirmed, measurement of attentional scope has...

Harvey, A. M., Ramp, D., Mellor, D. J. 2022. Review of the foundational knowledge required for assessing horse welfare. Animals 12(23), 3385.

A detailed understanding of what is usual for a species under optimal conditions is critical for identifying and interpreting different features of body function that have known impacts on animal welfare and its assessment. When...

Laméris, D. W., Verspeek, J., Salas, M. et al. 2022. Evaluating self-directed behaviours and their association with emotional arousal across two cognitive tasks in bonobos (Pan paniscus). Animals 12(21), 3002.

Self-directed behaviours (SDBs) are widely used as markers of emotional arousal in primates, and are commonly linked to negative arousal, or are used as indicators of stress or poor welfare. However, recent studies suggest that...

Zablocki-Thomas, P. B., Rogers, F. D., Bales, K. L. 2022. Neuroimaging of human and non-human animal emotion and affect in the context of social relationships. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 16, 994504.

Long-term relationships are essential for the psychological wellbeing of humans and many animals. Positive emotions and affective experiences (e.g., romantic or platonic love) seem to be closely related to the creation and maintenance of social...

Gilmour, K. M., Bard, B. 2022. Social buffering of the stress response: Insights from fishes. Biology Letters 18(10), 20220332.

Social buffering of stress refers to the effect of a social partner in reducing the cortisol or corticosterone response to a stressor. It has been well studied in mammals, particularly those that form pair bonds...

Vonk, J., McGuire, M. C., Johnson-Ulrich, Z. 2021. Bearing fruit: Piloting a novel judgment bias task in an American black bear. Zoo Biology 40(2), 89-97.

Judgment bias tasks can reveal changes in affect in animals as a function of environmental manipulations such as provision of enrichment. We assessed affect in an American black bear across seasonal changes in availability of...

Travain, T., Valsecchi, P. 2021. Infrared thermography in the study of animals’ emotional responses: A critical review. Animals 11(9), 2510.

Whether animals have emotions was historically a long-lasting question but, today, nobody disputes that they do. However, how to assess them and how to guarantee animals their welfare have become important research topics in the...

MacLellan, A., Fureix, C., Polanco, A. et al. 2021. Can animals develop depression? An overview and assessment of “depression-like” states. Behaviour 158(14/15), 1303–1353.

Describing certain animal behaviours as 'depression-like' or 'depressive' has become common across several fields of research. These typically involve unusually low activity or unresponsiveness and/or reduced interest in pleasure (anhedonia). While the term 'depression-like' carefully...

Serres, A., Hao, Y., Wang, D. 2020. Swimming features in captive odontocetes: Indicative of animals’ emotional state? Behavioural Processes 170, 103998.

Captive welfare studies in odontocete species have been mostly conducted on bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) while the welfare of many other species’ -including endangered species- remains poorly studied. More research is needed to find and...

Elwood, R. W. 2020. Do arthropods respond to noxious stimuli purely by reflex? Animal Sentience 29(10).

Mikhalevich & Powell (2020) argue that it is wrong to dismiss the idea of sentience in invertebrates. Here, I expand on the evidence for crustaceans responding to noxious stimuli in ways that are not explained...

McMillan, F. D. (ed). 2019. Mental Health and Well-being in Animals (2nd ed). CABI, Wallingford, UK.

This second edition is fully revised, expanded, and comprehensively updated with the most current knowledge about the full array of mental health issues seen in animals. Written by key opinion leaders, internationally-recognized experts and specialists...

Špinka, M. 2019. Animal agency, animal awareness and animal welfare. Animal Welfare 28(1), 11–20.

In nature, animals need to actively engage with the environment in order to prosper in survival and reproduction. Hence, agency is a central adaptive characteristic of animal life. In this paper, I propose that from...

Cronin, K. A., Bethell, E. J., Jacobson, S. L. et al. 2018. Evaluating mood changes in response to anthropogenic noise with a response-slowing task in three species of zoo-housed primates. Animal Behavior and Cognition 5(2), 209–221.

In the zoo environment, anthropogenic noise is common as sound levels fluctuate due to visitors, construction, habitat design, and special events. In this study, changes in the mood of three species of zoo-housed primates in...

Veasey, J. S. 2017. In pursuit of peak animal welfare; the need to prioritize the meaningful over the measurable. Zoo Biology 36(6), 413–425.

Despite the diversity of animal welfare definitions, most recognise the centrality of the feelings of animals which are currently impossible to measure directly. As a result, animal welfare assessment is heavily reliant upon the indirect...

Špinka, M., Wemelsfelder, F. 2011. Environmental challenge and animal agency. Animal Welfare 27–43.

Challenges are there to be overcome – seen usually as problems to avoid rather than as opportunities to enjoy. However, for humans a life without challenge would be likely to be dull and boring, lacking...

Duncan, I. J., Petherick, J. C. 1991. The implications of cognitive processes for animal welfare. Journal of Animal Science 69(12), 5017–5022.

In general, codes that have been designed to safeguard the welfare of animals emphasize the importance of providing an environment that will ensure good health and a normal physiological and physical state, that is, they...