Tickling, a Technique for Inducing Positive Affect When Handling Rats

Abstract

Handling small animals such as rats can lead to several adverse effects. These include the fear of humans, resistance to handling, increased injury risk for both the animals and the hands of their handlers, decreased animal welfare, and less valid research data. To minimize negative effects on experimental results and human-animal relationships, research animals are often habituated to being handled. However, the methods of habituation are highly variable and often of limited effectiveness. More potently, it is possible for humans to mimic aspects of the animals' playful rough-and-tumble behavior during handling. When applied to laboratory rats in a systematic manner, this playful handling, referred to as tickling, consistently gives rise to positive behavioral responses. This article provides a detailed description of a standardized rat tickling technique. This method can contribute to future investigations into positive affective states in animals, make it easier to handle rats for common husbandry activities such as cage changing or medical/research procedures such as injection, and be implemented as a source of social enrichment. It is concluded that this method can be used to efficiently and practicably reduce rats' fearfulness of humans and improve their welfare, as well as reliably model positive affective states.

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

“…In this study, simply by being asked about rat tickling, waitlist participants may have sought out additional information about rat tickling during the study period that may have changed their opinions or encouraged them to start attempting implementation. For example, our team has published an online downloadable handout, a video protocol, and a general information video that are all freely available online (ag.purdue.edu/ansc/gaskill/resources/) [10,12,26]. The Hawthorne effect could have also played a part in why our study did not detect differences in implementation between waitlist and trained participants at the end of the study.…”

Laboratory animal welfare and human attitudes: A cross-sectional survey on heterospecific play or “rat tickling”

“…In March of 2018, laboratory animal personnel in this population reported mostly no or low familiarity with and implementation of rat tickling. Although rat tickling originated in 1999 and has over 32 publications [7], the technique was not published as a habituation technique until 2008 [19], with its evidence base synthesized until 2017 [7], and with a peer-reviewed video standard operating procedure until May 2018 (after this survey was administered) [20]. It is possible that peer reviewed journal articles are not the almost effective form of communication for busy laboratory animal personnel.…”

“…Furthermore, even when personnel did report implementing rat tickling, many indicated using techniques that do not mimic aspects of rat rough-and-tumble play with a dorsal contact and pin [20]. For example, 21% of participants indicated that their rats are “tickled” with only a dorsal contact, similar to stroking or petting.…”

Odour conditioning of positive affective states: Rats can learn to associate an odour with being tickled

“…One protocol of rat tickling has been described in detail by [49]. This consists of 15s pauses in between 15s tickling bouts with 4 to 5 dorsal contacts and pins each time.…”