THE EFFECTS OF GROUP VERSUS SINGLE HOUSING ON HOME CAGE BEHAVIOUR IN TWO STRAINS OF LABORATORY MICE

Authors

  • Ahmed F. Abou-Elnaga
  • Ibrahim F. Rehan
  • Ralph R Thompson
  • Usama A Abou-Ismail
  • Motamed E Mahmoud
  • Radi A Mohamed
  • Hesham H Mohammed
  • Ahmed A Sabek
  • Mohamed Z Elhussiny

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26873/SVR-742-2019

Abstract

Studying the behavioural patterns of animals in their house may help to understand their needs, but there has been a little investigation of home-cage behaviours in commonly used inbred strains of mice such as C57BL/6 and DBA/2. Therefore, understanding behavioural patterns in these mice is important for neuroscience research. For the first time, this experiment was carried out to investigate the long-term effects of housing conditions (single vs. group) on home cage behaviour of C57BL/6 and DBA/2 mice, in order to reveal differences between C57BL/6 and DBA/2 in home-cage behaviours and in response to single-housing. Sixty-four mice (32 mice/strain) were housed either singly (SH) (n= 32) or in four groups, each group contained 8 animals. Home cage behavioural patterns were recorded weekly using ethogram-based instantaneous sampling for 5 consecutive weeks. Regardless of strain, single housed (SH) mice displayed higher levels of grooming and bedding directed-behaviours and were more frequently seen in-the-crawl ball, and had lower levels of feeding behaviour compared to their group housed (GH) conspecifics. There were significant strain differences in anxiety-related behaviours with the DBA/2 strain demonstrating higher levels of sleep, feeding and grooming behaviour and frequent presence in-the-crawl ball, and lower levels of exploration, locomotion and bedding-directed behaviour compared to the C57BL/6 strain. The results therefore suggest that different housing systems influence home cage behaviours of laboratory mice with the mice of the DBA/2 strain appearing more anxious. These findings may also have great implications for researchers to decide the most appropriate phenotype to use in measuring neural response–relevant behaviours in novel animal/human models.

Key words: anxiety; behaviour; C57BL/6; DBA/2; ethogram; home-cage

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Published

2019-02-17

How to Cite

Abou-Elnaga, A. F., Rehan, I. F., Thompson, R. R., Abou-Ismail, U. A., Mahmoud, M. E., Mohamed, R. A., Mohammed, H. H., Sabek, A. A., & Elhussiny, M. Z. (2019). THE EFFECTS OF GROUP VERSUS SINGLE HOUSING ON HOME CAGE BEHAVIOUR IN TWO STRAINS OF LABORATORY MICE. Slovenian Veterinary Research, 56(22-Suppl). https://doi.org/10.26873/SVR-742-2019

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Section

Veterinary Medicine and The One Health Concept