Scent is the main factor is male mouse aggression and cause of single mouse housing. Could a built in “odour eater” solve these issues? Or would removing olfactory capabilities have negative welfare implications when smell is used for marking territory and social cohesion in the cage?

Future_Back_1

With individually ventillated cages, latex gloves, and handling mice in plastic tunnel rather than lifting them by hand, technicians have fewer physical interactions with the animals. Is this in the best interest of mice? Will care become further automated by digital methods, much like washing cages has been taken over by robots in many facilities? Does this change the skills needed of technicians, and how they relate to the animals in their care?

Future_Bottom_1

So then you got the health and safety saying 'well, you’ve all got to wear total protection, mask, gloves.' You say, 'well, animals prefer you not to wear gloves'. They like the touch of your hand and all the rest of it. Appreciate if it’s a dangerous chemical you’re using you’ve got to wear gloves or whatever. It's costs and benefits at the end of the day. But in terms of just your average handling of the animals, the animals are much happier not being handled… And also you lose your sense of touch, even with the thin latex glove, that does lessen your sense of touch and sensitivity. So if you’re dealing with day old mice you don’t really get that contact through a film of latex. 

Future_Bottom_2

What might the future of caging look like? The answer will depend on the balancing of different needs and concerns, as it did throughout the twentieth century. Here, we offer some speculative starting points.

Future_Front_1

[Enrichment] was very ad hoc [in the 1980s], and it was, at that stage, looking back, you could ask the question, is it enriching the animal, or is it enriching the technician? As in, are they doing it because they feel better, because they’re putting things in the cage, or is it something that the animal actually benefits from? And now, probably in the last ten years, we’ve got enough good data to say that enrichment items should be something that increases the quantity and diversity of positive behaviours and/or decreases the occurrence of negative behaviours in the animals that you’re providing that enrichment to.

Veterinarian and animal welfare researcher

Future_Front_2

Domestic mice are social, but males are also quite territorial and become aggressive towards other males, meaning they are often kept apart. In studying animal preference and providing new kinds of solutions, such as this tunnel system where mice can interact in neutral spaces between their cages, is there a way for mice to express more social behaviours without compromising the needs for standardisation or disease control?

Future_Left_1

As you may now if you ever had mice in the house, they are nocturnal animals. Would their behaviours be encouraged and stress minimised by reducing artificial lighting?How can this be rolled out at scale, and would less light make observing mice and caring more difficult?

Future_Right_1

There’s also a huge amount of information about rodents themselves, from the physiology literature, which is finally trickling through. When I started, I had no idea that white mice were blind, that they get retinal degeneration at these sort of light intensities, and by six to eight weeks their vision is severely impaired. And they rely on their whiskers to find their way around.  That’s still not widely known. Some mice have impaired hearing and again, that’s not widely known amongst research workers or animal technicians. But it’s gradually making its way through, there are better textbooks, there are better resources. 

Veterinarian and welfare researcher

The Future Cage

What next for caging?

Can we measure the effects of enrichment?