Communication Between Rats of Experiment-Induced Stress and Its Impact on Experimental Results

Abstract

AbstractAnimals can communicate with one another through various types of signals. Evidence is presented that in certain experiments with rats, stress as induced by experimental treatment may give rise to the production of signals that affect non-treated animals housed nearby. Such communication between test and control animals may cause biased results and disturbed welfare of the latter. Communication of stress may be prevented by separate housing of control and test animals, but this could introduce another source of bias.