Affiliation:
1. Laboratory Animal Resource Center, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
2. Laboratory Animal Resource Center, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. hickmand@iupui.edu
Abstract
Although social housing of mice generally is preferred, mice must be individually housed in some situations. In these cases, enhanced attention to environmental enrichment is encouraged, but few studies assess the wellbeing of mice provided various enrichments. In this study, we used
female ICR mice to evaluate enrichment strategies that encouraged natural behaviors including foraging, exercise, sheltering, and socialization. After 3 mo of exposure to the assigned enrichment strategy, wellbeing was assessed by evaluating behavioral and physiologic differences between groups.
The results suggested that the use of red-tinted igloos may decrease markers of mouse wellbeing. However, none of the selected strategies yielded measures of wellbeing indicating improvement as compared to individually housed mice with no enrichment (negative control). Furthermore, measures
were not significantly different between paired mice and individually housed mice with no enrichment.
Publisher
American Association for Laboratory Animal Science
Subject
Animal Science and Zoology
Cited by
2 articles.
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