ArticleF1000Research2025
Stage 2 Registered Report: Refinement of tickling protocols to improve positive animal welfare in laboratory rats.
Article in F1000Research, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Stage 2 Registered Report: Refinement of tickling protocols to improve positive animal welfare in laboratory rats.F1000Research · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Rat tickling (heterospecific play between rats and the human hand), can promote positive affect and improve laboratory rat welfare. However, individual variation, particularly in response to the standard tickling protocol involving frequent pinning, may limit its effectiveness. Following hypothesis registration ( https://f1000research.com/articles/11-1053/v2), we aimed to refine the protocol by testing responses to different amounts of pinning during playful handling (PH), a flexible form of tactile interaction resembling juvenile rough and tumble rat play. Methods: Juvenile male and female Wistar rats received six daily 30-second sessions of PH with 0, 1, or 4 pins per session. A non-PH control involved a motionless hand. The primary response variables were the count and variability of 50 kHz ultrasonic vocalisations (USVs), which are measures of positive affect in rats. Additional exploratory outcomes included behavioural and physiological responses in the elevated plus maze and open field tests. Results: All PH treatments increased 50 kHz USVs compared to controls, confirming their positive effect. Males showed no difference in USVs across pinning conditions, while females vocalised more in treatments with minimal or no pinning. Except for the highest pinning treatment (P4), females produced more USVs than males across all conditions, including controls. However, reducing pinning did not reliably decrease USV variability or alter behavioural and physiological outcomes. Conclusions: Applying 50 kHz USVs as a measure of positive affect, these results confirm that tickling induces positive affect in juvenile laboratory rats. We report the novel finding of sex differences in response to tickling. Females preferred tickling where the amount of pinning is minimised relative to males that showed no preference across tickling treatments. Levels of USVs suggest that females possibly found the applied treatments, including control conditions, more rewarding than males did.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.