Short communication: Do the tameness of the dams and the sex of the offspring have an influence on the ?gentling? effect in laboratory rats?

Zausinger, Pia; Schneider, Barbara M.; Bauer, Alexander; Erhard, Michael H. und Doering, Dorothea (2022): Short communication: Do the tameness of the dams and the sex of the offspring have an influence on the ?gentling? effect in laboratory rats? In: Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research, Bd. 52-53: S. 45-49

Abstract

Gentling (soft touching, taming) has long-term effects on the behavior of laboratory rats ( Rattus norvegicus ). Our own studies showed that the use of a gentling program in the fourth and fifth week of life resulted in a significant reduction in fear behavior towards humans up to the age of 6 months. However, our investigations have so far only considered female animals. In the current study, we therefore wanted to determine whether there also is a long-lasting gentling effect in male rats. In addition, we intended to investigate whether there is an impact depending on the level of tameness of the mothers. We mated 14 female rats, which we selected from our previous experiments based on their behavior, with one male rat. Five females became pregnant and had litters (2 tame dams had 13 pups and 3 not tame dams had 18 pups). The 31 pups (16 female and 15 male rats) were divided into a gentling group (n = 16) and a not gentled group (n = 15). The previously developed gentling program was applied to the gentling group. That means the pups were gently touched, hand-fed and talked to during their fourth and fifth week of life (10 minutes per cage twice daily over a period of 14 days). The not gentled group did not receive any treatment. To evaluate the gentling effect on tameness, behavior tests according to our previous study were performed at the ages of 6, 8, 10, 14 and 16 weeks and 6 months. The experiments were blinded regarding parentage and treatment. The behavior tests revealed that the gentled rats were tamer than the not gentled rats. With Westfall correction for multiple testing, the estimated significant differences lasted up to the 30th week of life and therefore exceeded the results of our previous study. The gentled pups of the tame dams rendered better results than the gentled pups of the not tame dams. The female rats improved with increasing age and test experience, but the male rats did not. The results show that this gentling program reduces the fear of humans even in male laboratory rats and that the tame nature of the mothers affects the gentling effect in the offspring. (c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ )

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Tiermedizin > Veterinärwissenschaftliches Department ; Mathematik, Informatik und Statistik > Statistik
• Themengebiete: 600 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften > 610 Medizin und Gesundheit ; 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik > 510 Mathematik
• ISSN: 1558-7878
• Sprache: Englisch