Changing Human Behavior to Improve Animal Welfare: A Longitudinal Investigation of Training Laboratory Animal Personnel about Heterospecific Play or “Rat Tickling”

Abstract

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.

Why workshops work: Examining the efficacy of training trainers to train goats

“…Accordingly, goats trained by this group achieved the target behaviour more closely. This is in agreement with LaFollette et al ( 2020 ) who evaluated different educational programmes to implement rat tickling in an animal facility as refinement technique. Their study showed that participants with hands-on training education learned more effectively than participants trained purely online.…”

Advancing the 3Rs: innovation, implementation, ethics and society

“…Challenges to implementation itself include scientific barriers, such as the limitations of a given method; legal barriers, such as the "gold standard" of animal use in regulatory testing; economic barriers, such as the financial costs and time resources for implementing new approaches; cultural and institutional obstacles, such as difficulties establishing evaluation criteria for academic success that reward 3Rs implementation; and difficulties changing the established mindset. Ongoing efforts to address these issues [e.g., (61)(62)(63)(64)] are being made, but the examples are still rare. There are also barriers at the individual and laboratory level, where animal research is sometimes still seen as the nimbus of "serious research. "…”

Using refined methods to pick up mice: A survey benchmarking prevalence & beliefs about tunnel and cup handling

“…Additionally, personnel were mentioned as the single most important factor that enabled widespread adoption of refined handling. Therefore, both this survey and prior research [ 23 ] further indicates the importance of convincing people and providing training to increase refinement implementation.…”

“…A commonly stated barrier to refined handling was the perception that it would take more time to handle mice. A time barrier has been identified in several prior studies of refined rodent handling [ 19 , 20 , 23 , 30 ]. This perception may be due to time required to learn a new technique and early research requiring 30 s plus habituation time for refined methods [ 8 ].…”

“…By measuring these beliefs and their association to intentions, agencies can determine potential targets for interventions to increase the performance of behavior [22]. This method has been used in hundreds of published behavioral studies, including recent experimental surveys on the enactment of animal welfare improvements by animal care personnel [23].…”