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. 
Institute for Laboratory Animal Resources 1980. Laboratory Animal Management: Nonhuman Primates. National Academy Press, Washington, DC.

Lighting should be uniformly diffused throughout the area and provide adequate illumination for good house-keeping practices, adequate inspection of animals, and safe working conditions for personnel [p. 13].[This text has also been published in ILAR...

Gunnar, M. R., Gonzalez, C. A., Levine, S. 1980. The role of peers in modifying behavioral distress and pituitary-adrenal response to a novel environment in year-old rhesus monkeys. Physiology and Behavior 25, 795-798.

Infant rhesus macaques were captured from their social group and placed in an unfamiliar environment for 24 hours either (a) alone or (b) with another infant from the same group. When tested alone, the animals...

Goo, G. P., Sassenrath, E. N. 1980. Persistent adrenocortical activation in female rhesus monkeys after new breeding group formation. Journal of Medical Primatology 9, 325-334.

Persistent elevated adrenocortical responsiveness to ACTH has been demonstrated in female rhesus monkeys as long as 13 weeks after relocation into new single male breeding groups.

Friedmann, E., Katcher, A. H., Lynch, J. J. et al. 1980. Animal companions and one-year survival of patients after discharge from a coronary care unit. Public Health Reports 95, 307-312.

Of the 39 patients who did not own pets, 11 (28%) died, whereas only 3 (6%) of the 53 pet owners died within 1 year.

Drescher, V. M., Gantt, W. H., Whitehead, W. E. 1980. Heart rate response to touch. Psychosomatic Medicine 42, 559-559.

The effect of tactile stimulation on heart rate (HR) in humans was investigated under three conditions: 1) Experimenter outside of room in which subject is sitting; 2) experimenter in the room with the subject; 3)...

Deag, J. M. 1980. Interactions between males and unweaned barbary macaques: testing the agonistic buffering hypothesis. Behaviour 75, 54-81.

Observations of wild Barbary macaques in the Moroccan Middle Atlas revealed more male interaction with unweaned monkeys than has been described for other Cercopithecoidea. 2. Adult, subadult and juveniles males were all involved. On the...

Dawkins, M. S. 1980. Animal Suffering - The Science of Animal Welfare. Chapman and Hall, London, UK.

I wrote this book because I believe that the welfare of animals is a very important subject but one about which there is a lot of confusion and muddled thinking. I wanted to great deal...

Van Putten, G. 1980. Objective observation on the behaviour of fattening pigs. Animal Regulation Studies 3, 104-118.

Supplying straw reduced tail biting in group-housed pigs.

Reinhardt, V. 1980. Untersuchung Zum Sozialverhalten Des Rindes - Eine Zweijahrige Beobachtung an Einer Halb-Wilden Rinderhede (Bos Indicus) [Investigations on the Social Behaviour of Cattle - A Two-Year-Observation of a Half-Wild Cattle Herd (Bos Indicus); German Text With English Summary]. Birkhauser Verlag, Boston, MA.

The social behavior of a semi-wild cattle herd was described and analysed covering a 2-year observation period. In cattle husbandry, livestock should be only kept in such systems that meet the species-specific social needs of...

Price, E. O., Thos, J. 1980. Behavioral responses of short-term isolation in sheep and goats. Applied Animal Ethology (Applied Animal Behaviour Science) 6(4), 331-339.

Behavioral stress responses to social deprivation are described.

Peterson, E. A. 1980. Noise and laboratory animals. Laboratory Animal Science 30, 422-439.

The preponderance of experimental evidence gathered over the past three decades indicates that exposure to intense noise can lead to a wide variety of functional and structural changes in laboratory animals. Although little information regarding...

Nerem, R. M., Levensque, M. J., Cornhill, J. F. 1980. Social environment as a factor of diet induced atherosclerosis. Science 208, 1475-1476.

Rabbits were fed a high-cholesterol diet to induce atherosclerosis. Animals who received special attention from a person (frequent handling, petting, playing, gentle vocalization) showed a markedly lower incidence of atheroslerosis than subjects who received no...

Mantel, N. 1980. Assessing laboratory evidence for neoplastic activity. Biometics 36, 381-399.

Mortality and tumor incidence in corcinogenesis experiments differ between mice caged in the top vs. bottom of the rack.

Mackay-Sim, A., Laing, D. G. 1980. Discrimination of odours from stressed rats by non-stressed rats. Physiology and Behavior 24, 699-704.

Placing a rat into a new cage triggers release of corticosterones. This endocrine response is augmented if the new environment is one in which other rats had previously been subjected to stress.

Lenox, R. H., Kant, G. J., Sessions, G. R. et al. 1980. Specific hormonal and neurochemical responses to different stressors. Neuroendocrinology 30(5), 300-308.

The neuroendocrine and neurochemical responses of rats to 5 min of cold exposure versus 5 min of forced immobilization were determined and compared. We found that plasma hormones and brain neurochemical systems responded differently to...

Jones, R. B., Harvey, S., Hughes, B. O. et al. 1980. Growth and the plasma concentrations of growth hormone and prolactin in chicks: Effects of 'environmental enrichment', sex and strain. British Poultry Science 21(6), 457-462.

The enriched boxes were similar to the bare ones but also contained the following objects: two large red rubbing bungs, a golf ball, a bottle top, two coloured table tennis balls hanging from the cage...

Hutson, G. D. 1980. The effect of previous experience on sheep movement through yards. Applied Animal Ethology (Applied Animal Behaviour Science) 6, 233-240.

Positive reinforcement such as barley reduced the amount of time needed to move sheep through a race system.

Herreid, C. F., Schlenker, E. H. 1980. Energetics of mice in stable and unstable social conditions: evidence of an air-borne factor affecting metabolism. Animal Behaviour 28, 20-28.

Male mice kept individually have a 15% higher metabolic rate than mice kept in stable same gender pairs.

Gutwein, B. M., Fishbein, W. 1980. Paradoxical sleep and memory (I): Selective alterations following enriched and impoverished environmental rearing. Brain Research Bulletin 5(1), 9-12.

Mice were reared in either enriched (EE), social control, (SE), or impoverished (IE) environments for 30 days. Environmental enrichment results in a significant and selective increase in paradoxical sleep (PS, or REM sleep) and also...

Gartner, K., Buttner, D., Dohler, R. et al. 1980. Stress response of rats to handling and experimental procedures. Laboratory Animals 14, 267-274.

Serum corticosterone levels increased significantly within four minutes, reached a peak at 15 minutes and were back to control values 60 minutes after cage displacement. Prolactin, TSH, LH and FSH serum concentrations were also affected...

Feldhaus, R. A. 1980. A resting platform for dog pens. Laboratory Animal Science 30(4-1), 714-715.

After converting our dog holding facilities from commercial dog cages to pen type enclosures, it became apparent that suitable resting platforms were needed. Clear acrylic plastic was used to construct the resting platforms.

Dewsbury, D. A. 1980. Wheel-running behaviour in 12 species of muroid rodents. Behavioural Processes 5, 271-280.

The objective of this research was to describe the levels and periodicity of wheel running in 12 species of muroid rodents in order that comparisons could be made among different measures of activity in a...

Cowan, D. F. 1980. Adaption, maladaption and disease. In: Reproductive Biology and Diseases of Captive Reptiles. Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles, Contributions to Herpetology No. 1. Murphy, J. B. , Collins, J. T. (eds), 191-196. Meseraull Printing, Lawrence, KS.

Reptiles/ Amphibians

Chiszar, D., Wellborn, S., Wand, M. A. et al. 1980. Investigatory behavior in snakes, II: Cage cleaning and the induction of defecation in snakes. Animal Learning and Behavior 8, 505-510.

In Experiment 1, boid and colubrid snakes defecated with shorter latencies after their home cages were cleaned than did control snakes that received equivalent handling without cage cleaning. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and also...

Bowd, A. D. 1980. Ethics and animal experimentation. American Psychologist 35, 224-225.

The researcher's central dilemma exists in an especially acute form in psychology: either the animal is not like us, in which case there is no reason for performing the experiment; or else the animal is...