The use of radio-telemetry in freely moving laboratory animals in combination with a behavior system

K. Kramer

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Department of Safety and the Environment, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Physiological parameters, such as body weight, hormonal levels in plasma and/or urine, heart rate, blood pressure and body temperature are often used for the assessment of the well-being of laboratory animals. When measuring physiological parameters as heart rate, blood pressure or body temperature in restraint small laboratory animals, the results must be interpreted with caution. E.g. blood pressure measurements in mice via tail-cuff technique cause an increase in both heart rate and blood pressure. In general, animals subjected to various laboratory procedures and environmental changes will react to novel situations with changes in their physiological responses.

Since radio-telemetry provides a way to obtain accurate and reliable physiological measurements from awake and freely moving animals in their own environment, it seems to be a valuable tool to assess animal welfare without the interference of, for instance, handling. Currently, radio-telemetry can be applied in all frequently used laboratory animal species. Implantable, miniaturized radio-telemetry devices enable the acquisition of non biased experimental data, lead to substantial reduction of the number of animals used and are often a refinement of the experiment. During this presentation the recent advances in the use of radio-telemetry in combination with a behavior system in the study of animal welfare in small laboratory animals, will be discussed. Especially an emphasis will be placed on the benefits of combining behavioral data obtained by the LABORAS behavior system with physiological data obtained by the DSI telemetry system.

Paper presented at Measuring Behavior 2005 , 5^th International Conference on Methods and Techniques in Behavioral Research, 30 August - 2 September 2005, Wageningen, The Netherlands.

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