Web Resource: Health & Welfare of Laboratory Animals

Assessing the Health and Welfare of Laboratory Animals (AHWLA) is a free laboratory animal health and welfare tutorial site providing practical guidance on recognising signs of health and good welfare. This site has a collection of tutorials and is made available by Newcastle University, and supported by the 3R Research Foundation Switzerland. Tutorials currently available cover the following: correct procedures for handling small mammals for clinical examination and medication; recognising post-operative pain in animals; and assessing the health and welfare of laboratory animals. Each tutorial features images and videos and references are provided. Users of this site can sign up for the AHWLA newsletter, which provides updates on new tutorials and Web resource links added to the site.

Another interesting lab animal website is the one for ‘The laboratory rat: a natural history’, a film shot as a wildlife documentary over several months. The 27 minute film follows the lives of domestic rats after being released in a large outdoor enclosure where they have to compete, like their wild counterparts, for food, shelter and mates. The sequences are available in digital format and the Web site also contains over 40 freely downloadable slides and movie clips (some silent) that span all the major sections of the documentary. The film and web site aim to redress the lack of useful material available to illustrate the teaching of behavioural studies. Made available on the Web by Manuel Berdoy, University of Oxford.

posted by Brooke