German Center for the Protection of Laboratory Animals (Bf3R), German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), Berlin, Germany.
Animal Behavior and Laboratory Animal Science, Institute of Animal Welfare, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
PLoS One. 2023 Jan 19;18(1):e0278709. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0278709. eCollection 2023.
Laboratory mice spend most of their lives in cages, not experiments, so improving housing conditions is a first-choice approach to improving their welfare. Despite the increasing popularity of enrichment, little is known about the benefits from an animal perspective. For a detailed analysis, we categorized enrichment items according to their prospective use into the categories 'structural', 'housing', and 'foraging'. In homecage-based multiple binary choice tests 12 female C57BL/6J mice chose between enrichment items within the respective categories over a 46-hour period. A new analyzing method combined the binary decisions and ranked the enrichment items within each category by calculating worth values and consensus errors. Although there was no unequivocal ranking that was true in its entire rank order for all individual mice, certain elements (e.g. lattice ball, second plane) were always among the top positions. Overall, a high consensus error in ranking positions reflects strong individual differences in preferences which could not be resolved due to the relatively small sample size. However, individual differences in the preference for enrichment items highlights the importance of a varied enrichment approach, as there does not seem to be one item that satisfies the wants and needs of all individuals to the same degree. An enrichment concept, in which the needs of the animals are central, contributes to a more specific refinement of housing conditions.
实验小鼠一生中的大部分时间都在笼子里度过，而不是在实验中，因此改善饲养条件是提高其福利的首选方法。尽管丰容越来越受欢迎，但从动物的角度来看，其益处却知之甚少。为了进行详细的分析，我们根据预期用途将丰容物品分为“结构性”、“住房”和“觅食”三类。在基于家庭笼的多项二元选择测试中，12 只雌性 C57BL/6J 小鼠在 46 小时内选择了各自类别的丰容物品。一种新的分析方法将二元决策结合起来，并通过计算价值值和共识误差对每个类别的丰容物品进行排名。尽管对于所有个体老鼠来说，没有一个明确的排名是完全正确的，但某些元素（例如格子球、第二平面）总是处于前列。总的来说，排名位置的共识误差较高反映了个体偏好存在强烈差异，由于样本量相对较小，这些差异无法得到解决。然而，对丰容物品的偏好存在个体差异，突出了采用多样化丰容方法的重要性，因为似乎没有一种物品能够以相同的程度满足所有个体的需求和愿望。以动物需求为核心的丰容概念有助于更具体地改善饲养条件。
