Abstract
Simple SummaryWhen laboratory rats are first handled, they can experience fear and stress, which negatively influences animal welfare. Rat tickling, a positive handling technique, can improve these outcomes. However, despite evidence for rat tickling’s animal welfare benefits, the technique is rarely implemented, in part because of a lack of training. Our purpose was to determine the effectiveness of two rat tickling training programs (as compared to a control treatment) on reported implementation, self-efficacy, knowledge, familiarity, and beliefs about rat tickling. After completing an initial survey, 96 laboratory animal personnel currently working with rats were assigned to receive online-only training, online + hands-on training, or no training (control condition). Participants received further surveys directly after training and 2 months later. Results showed that both online-only and online + hands-on training improved key outcomes for rat tickling (i.e., increased implementation, self-efficacy, knowledge, and familiarity rat tickling). Online + hands-on training had a few additional benefits (i.e., increased control beliefs and greater increases for self-efficacy and familiarity with rat tickling). Overall, these findings support the development of targeted interactive training programs to improve the implementation of potential welfare-enhancing techniques.Despite evidence for rat tickling’s animal welfare benefits, the technique is rarely implemented in part because of a lack of training. This study’s purpose was to determine the efficacy of online-only or online + hands-on training programs on key outcomes for rat tickling in comparison to a waitlist control condition. After completing a baseline survey, laboratory animal personnel currently working with rats in the United States were semi-randomized to receive online-only training (n = 30), online + hands-on training (n = 34), or waitlist control (n = 32). Participants received further surveys directly after training and 2 months later. Data were analyzed using general linear mixed models. At the 2-month follow-up compared to baseline, both training groups reported increased implementation, self-efficacy, knowledge, and familiarity of rat tickling while only the online + hands-on training participants reported increased control beliefs (while the waitlist group stayed the same). At the 2-month follow-up compared to the waitlist, hands-on training participants reported increased self-efficacy and familiarity with rat tickling. Overall, findings show that both online-only and online + hands-on training can improve key outcomes for rat tickling. Although online + hands-on training is slightly more effective, the interactive online-only training has the potential to improve widescale implementation of a welfare-enhancing technique.
Highlights
Scientific research has provided a variety of well-supported strategies to improve animal welfare across species and settings, these findings are often not widely implemented
The majority had some sort of laboratory animal certification (86%)
Several participants mentioned that they were sharing the training module widely with colleagues and implementing it in their internal animal handling courses. This is the first study to experimentally evaluate the efficacy of training laboratory animal personnel to improve important outcomes related to rat welfare
Summary
Scientific research has provided a variety of well-supported strategies to improve animal welfare across species and settings, these findings are often not widely implemented. Examples of issues where a lack of implementation has been reported despite known strategies include pig aggression [1], lameness in dairy cows [2], and laboratory rodent handling [3]. This lack of implementation should be of concern to researchers and funding agencies who wish to see scientific results translated into everyday practices to improve animal welfare. If research findings are not translated to practice, their applied benefits are unrealized One example of these circumstances can be found in laboratory rats. Beyond negatively impacting rat welfare, stress is a potential confounding factor for scientific experiments [8]
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