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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2023

A C Beynen
A C Beynen*
Affiliation:
Department of Laboratory Animal Science, State University of Utrecht, PO Box 80.166, 3508 TD Utrecht, The Netherlands
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Abstract

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Animals 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.

Keywords

animal welfarebiased resultscommunicationratsstress
Type
Research Article
Information
Animal Welfare , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , August 1992 , pp. 153 - 159
Copyright
© 1992 Universities Federation for Animal Welfare

References

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