ArticleJournal of visualized experiments : JoVE2018
Tickling, a Technique for Inducing Positive Affect When Handling Rats.
Article in Journal of visualized experiments : JoVE, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Rehoming Laboratory Rats: Exploring Perceptions of Rehomers, Animal Technicians, and Biomedical Researchers.Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science : JAALAS · 2026Article
- Serum Pharmacokinetics of a Highly Concentrated Buprenorphine Formulation in Older Female Sprague-Dawley Rats (Rattus norvegicus).Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science : JAALAS · 2025Article
- Status epilepticus induced on postnatal day 7 alters ultrasonic vocalization call types on postnatal days 8 and 9.Epilepsy & behavior : E&B · 2025Article
- Oxytocin facilitates human touch-induced play behavior in rats.Current biology : CB · 2025Article
- Conspecific presence facilitates 22-kHz ultrasonic calls in male rats exposed to cat odor.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Stage 2 Registered Report: Refinement of tickling protocols to improve positive animal welfare in laboratory rats.F1000Research · 2025Article
- Exploring rodent prosociality: A conceptual framework.Translational neuroscience · 2025Review
- You are How You Eat: Foraging Behavior as a Potential Novel Marker of Rat Affective State.Affective science · 2024Article
- Disentangling developmental effects of play aspects in rat rough-and-tumble play.Biology letters · 2024Article
- A Novel Improved Thromboembolism-Based Rat Stroke Model That Meets the Latest Standards in Preclinical Studies.Brain sciences · 2022Article
- Who's laughing? Play, tickling and ultrasonic vocalizations in rats.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Survey on the Past Decade of Technology in Animal Enrichment: A Scoping Review.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Stage 1 Registered Report: Refinement of tickling protocols to improve positive animal welfare in laboratory rats.F1000Research · 2022Article
- Biological Functions of Rat Ultrasonic Vocalizations, Arousal Mechanisms, and Call Initiation.Brain sciences · 2021Review
- Crying With Laughter: Adapting the Tickling Protocol to Address Individual Differences Among Rats in Their Response to Playful Handling.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2021Article
- Neuroskeletal Effects of Chronic Bioelectric Nerve Stimulation in Health and Diabetes.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2021Article
- Gradual Restraint Habituation for Awake Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Combined With a Sparse Imaging Paradigm Reduces Motion Artifacts and Stress Levels in Rodents.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2021Article
- Changing Human Behavior to Improve Animal Welfare: A Longitudinal Investigation of Training Laboratory Animal Personnel about Heterospecific Play or "Rat Tickling".Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2020Article
- Odour conditioning of positive affective states: Rats can learn to associate an odour with being tickled.PloS one · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Handling small animals such as rats can lead to several adverse effects. These include the fear of humans, resistance to handling, increased injury risk for both the animals and the hands of their handlers, decreased animal welfare, and less valid research data. To minimize negative effects on experimental results and human-animal relationships, research animals are often habituated to being handled. However, the methods of habituation are highly variable and often of limited effectiveness. More potently, it is possible for humans to mimic aspects of the animals' playful rough-and-tumble behavior during handling. When applied to laboratory rats in a systematic manner, this playful handling, referred to as tickling, consistently gives rise to positive behavioral responses. This article provides a detailed description of a standardized rat tickling technique. This method can contribute to future investigations into positive affective states in animals, make it easier to handle rats for common husbandry activities such as cage changing or medical/research procedures such as injection, and be implemented as a source of social enrichment. It is concluded that this method can be used to efficiently and practicably reduce rats' fearfulness of humans and improve their welfare, as well as reliably model positive affective states.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.