Rating enrichment items by group-housed laboratory mice in multiple binary choice tests using an RFID-based tracking system

Abstract

There is a growing body of evidence that enrichment of the housing conditions of laboratory animals has positive effects on daily behavior, growth, and health. Laboratory mice spend most of their lives in their housing rather than in experimental apparatus, so improving housing conditions is a first-choice approach to improving their welfare. Despite the increasing popularity of enrichment, little is known about whether it is also perceived as being beneficial from the animal's point of view. This is especially true due to the fact that enrichment has become an umbrella term that encompasses a wide variety of different elements. We categorized enrichment items according to their prospective use into the categories structural, housing, and foraging and let female C57BL/6J mice chose within the categories according to their preference. Preferences were tested over a 46-hour period in a home cage system consisting of two interconnected cages equipped with the respective items to be compared. A new analysing method combined binary decisions and ranked the enrichment items within each category by calculating worth values. The assignment of worth values to the items to be compared led to a further gain in information, estimating importance from the mice's point of view in addition to pure ranking. Given the known beneficial effects of enrichment, these data will help in deciding how to provide appropriate enrichment elements to improve animal welfare and refine animal experimentation.

Radio frequency identification technology reduce intravenous thrombolysis time in acute ischemic stroke

“…RFID technology, an advanced technique for locating and tracking items, has been used for nearly 50 years [13]. Currently, RFID has been used in the medical field to track the transfer chain of drugs, blood products, consumables, etc.…”

Choice-based severity scale (CSS): assessing the relative severity of procedures from a laboratory animal’s perspective

“…For example, animals have preferences for tasks varying in difficulty and respond accordingly when the reward and/or effort contingencies are adjusted ( Suzuki & Matsuzawa, 1997 ; Calapai et al, 2017 ). Outside of experimental tasks, animals have exhibited preferences for more complex options with respects to positive reinforcement training ( e.g ., Schapiro & Lambeth, 2007 ), environmental parameters ( e.g ., supplementary light: Buchanan-Smith & Badihi, 2012 ), enrichment ( e.g ., Hobbiesiefken et al, 2021 ), and even determining the type and/or whether to cooperate with medical treatment ( e.g ., Magden et al, 2013 , 2016 ; Webb, Hau & Schapiro, 2018 ). Previous work has advocated for the use of preference testing to guide animal welfare assessment, particularly for determining the value of different environment-based items to animals ( Habedank et al, 2018 ; Kahnau et al, 2020 , 2022 ).…”