Using the facial grimace scale to evaluate rabbit wellness in post-procedural monitoring

Hampshire, Victoria; Robertson, Sheilah A.

doi:10.1038/laban.806

Cited by 53 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…The face is widely used to assess emotional expression, but especially the expression of pain in individuals who cannot speak, for example some of the elderly and neonates (Rinn, 1984) and, more recently, non-human animals such as the mouse (Langford et al, 2010), rat (Sotocinal et al, 2011), horse (Dalla Costa et al, 2014), rabbit (Hampshire and Robertson 2015), and cat (Holden et al 2014). Darwin (1872) described facial expression of a wide range of emotions across species in his seminal text, "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals", in which he argued that the contraction of specific muscle groups creates spontaneous facial expressions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Facial correlates of emotional behaviour in the domestic cat (Felis catus)

Bennett

Gourkow

Mills

2017

Behavioural Processes

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Leyhausen's (1979) work on cat behaviour and facial expressions associated with offensive and defensive behaviour is widely embraced as the standard for interpretation of agonistic behaviour in this species. However, it is a largely anecdotal description that can be easily misunderstood. Recently a facial action coding system has been developed for cats (CatFACS), similar to that used for objectively coding human facial expressions. This study reports on the use of this system to describe the relationship between behaviour and facial expressions of cats in confinement contexts without and with human interaction, in order to generate hypotheses about the relationship between these expressions and underlying emotional state. Video recordings taken of 29 cats resident in a Canadian animal shelter were analysed using 1-0 sampling of 275 4-s video clips. Observations under the two conditions were analysed descriptively using hierarchical cluster analysis for binomial data and indicated that in both situations, about half of the data clustered into three groups. An argument is presented that these largely reflect states based on varying degrees of relaxed engagement, fear and frustration. Facial actions associated with fear included blinking and half-blinking and a left head and gaze bias at lower intensities. Facial actions consistently associated with frustration included hissing, nose-licking, dropping of the jaw, the raising of the upper lip, nose wrinkling, lower lip depression, parting of the lips, mouth stretching, vocalisation and showing of the tongue. Relaxed engagement appeared to be associated with a right gaze and head turn bias. The results also indicate potential qualitative changes associated with differences in intensity in emotional expression following human intervention. The results were also compared to the classic description of "offensive and defensive moods" in cats (Leyhausen, 1979) and previous work by Gourkow et al. (2014a) on behavioural styles in cats in order to assess if these observations had replicable features noted by others. This revealed evidence of convergent validity between the methods However, the use of CatFACS revealed elements relating to vocalisation and response lateralisation, not previously reported in this literature.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Facial correlates of emotional behaviour in the domestic cat (Felis catus)

Bennett

Gourkow

Mills

2017

Behavioural Processes

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“…Since we can measure its severity from a patients’ subjective report, it is also considered that the accurate evaluation of pain in animals remains impossible. Previous reports demonstrated that spontaneous pain in animals such as rats, mice, horses, and rabbits could be evaluated using the changes of facial expressions, and that patients with severe nausea change their facial expression to signify distress (Langford et al, 2010; Sotocinal et al, 2011; Hampshire and Robertson, 2015; Dalla Costa et al, 2016). We observed that rats made grimaces after the administration of cisplatin; therefore, we hypothesized that changes in facial expression can be used as a method to evaluate the nausea-like response in rats.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detection of Nausea-Like Response in Rats by Monitoring Facial Expression

2017

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Patients receiving cancer chemotherapy experience nausea and vomiting. They are not life-threatening symptoms, but their insufficient control reduces the patients’ quality of life. To identify methods for the management of nausea and vomiting in preclinical studies, the objective evaluation of these symptoms in laboratory animals is required. Unlike vomiting, nausea is defined as a subjective feeling described as recognition of the need to vomit; thus, determination of the severity of nausea in laboratory animals is considered to be difficult. However, since we observed that rats grimace after the administration of cisplatin, we hypothesized that changes in facial expression can be used as a method to detect nausea. In this study, we monitored the changes in the facial expression of rats after the administration of cisplatin and investigated the effect of anti-emetic drugs on the prevention of cisplatin-induced changes in facial expression. Rats were housed in individual cages with free access to food and tap water, and their facial expressions were continuously recorded by infrared video camera. On the day of the experiment, rats received cisplatin (0, 3, and 6 mg/kg, i.p.) with or without a daily injection of a 5-HT3 receptor antagonist (granisetron: 0.1 mg/kg, i.p.) or a neurokinin NK1 receptor antagonist (fosaprepitant: 2 mg/kg, i.p.), and their eye-opening index (the ratio between longitudinal and axial lengths of the eye) in the recorded video image was calculated. Cisplatin significantly and dose-dependently induced a decrease of the eye-opening index 6 h after the cisplatin injection, and the decrease continued for 2 days. The acute phase (day 1), but not the delayed phase (day 2), of the decreased eye-opening index was inhibited by treatment with granisetron; however, fosaprepitant abolished both phases of changes. The time-course of changes in facial expression are similar to clinical evidence of cisplatin-induced nausea in humans. These findings indicate that the monitoring of facial expression has the potential to be useful for the detection of a nausea-like response in laboratory animals.

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“…It would be preferable to use a more realistic distress metric. While different methods for quantifying pain and distress in laboratory animals are being developed, the relationships between distress and change in effects such as changes in relative liver weight are unknown. In order to evaluate strategies for experimental design involving research animals there is a need of new tools and concepts to investigate if it is more ethically and scientifically efficient to use many animals at lower doses with subtle effects or few animals at higher doses with clear effects.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influence of Distribution of Animals between Dose Groups on Estimated Benchmark Dose and Animal Welfare for Continuous Effects

et al. 2017

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The benchmark dose (BMD) approach is increasingly used as a preferred approach for doseeffect analysis, but standard experimental designs are generally not optimized for BMD analysis. The aim of this study was to evaluate how the use of unequally sized dose groups affects the quality of BMD estimates in toxicity testing, with special consideration of the total burden of animal distress. We generated continuous dose-effect data by Monte Carlo simulation using two dose-effect curves based on endpoints with different shape parameters. Eighty-five designs, each with four dose groups of unequal size, were examined in scenarios ranging from low-to high-dose placements and with a total number of animals set to 40, 80, or 200. For each simulation, a BMD value was estimated and compared with the "true" BMD. In general, redistribution of animals from higher to lower dose groups resulted in an improved precision of the calculated BMD value as long as dose placements were high enough to detect a significant trend in the dose-effect data with sufficient power. The improved BMD precision and the associated reduction of the number of animals exposed to the highest dose, where chemically induced distress is most likely to occur, are favorable for the reduction and refinement principles. The result thereby strengthen BMD-aligned design of experiments as a means for more accurate hazard characterization along with animal welfare improvements.

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Using the facial grimace scale to evaluate rabbit wellness in post-procedural monitoring

Cited by 53 publications

References 5 publications

Facial correlates of emotional behaviour in the domestic cat (Felis catus)

Facial correlates of emotional behaviour in the domestic cat (Felis catus)

Detection of Nausea-Like Response in Rats by Monitoring Facial Expression

Influence of Distribution of Animals between Dose Groups on Estimated Benchmark Dose and Animal Welfare for Continuous Effects

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