Social Housing & Companionship

Alleviating isolation stress in chickens: The benefits of home pen playback and mirrors (2025)

This study investigated whether the provision of (1) a mirror or (2) video and sound playback of conspecifics in the home pen (i.e., playback) could alleviate stress in socially isolated adult domestic chickens. Thirty adult chickens participated in the study,...

Year Published: 2025Topics: Social Housing & CompanionshipAnimal Type: Bird, Chicken

Citation: Sirovnik, J. 2025. Alleviating isolation stress in chickens: The benefits of home pen playback and mirrors. PLOS ONE 20(2), e0318126.

Mixing groups of sheep changes vocalizations when an individual animal is isolated (2025)

In recent years, welfare, which includes pleasurable and unpleasant emotions, is of utmost importance in animals reared under intensive farming systems. Various indices have been reported to evaluate welfare. Among them, vocalizations form non-invasive indices of animals' inner state. The...

Year Published: 2025Topics: Social Housing & CompanionshipAnimal Type: Sheep

Citation: Papadaki, K., Bizelis, I., Laliotis, G. P. 2025. Mixing groups of sheep changes vocalizations when an individual animal is isolated. Discover Animals 2(1), 5.

Social enrichment to reduce pacing in a solitary housed male lion-tailed macaque Macaca silenus (2025)

Environmental enrichment is frequently used to improve the captive environment, aiming to enhance the quality of captive animal care. Social enrichment is considered to be the most effective form of enrichment for captive primates, particularly in the reduction of abnormal...

Year Published: 2025Topics: Social Housing & CompanionshipAnimal Type: Macaque, Nonhuman Primate

Citation: Newman, R., Quirke, T., McKeown, S. et al. 2025. Social enrichment to reduce pacing in a solitary housed male lion-tailed macaque Macaca silenus. Journal of Zoo and Aquarium Research 13(1), 52–55.

By your side: How social support affects training duration, task performance and behaviour of pigs in a judgement bias task (2025)

Pigs (Sus scrofa domesticus) and most other farmed species are social animals for whom social isolation is known to cause stress. However, their social nature is commonly ignored in behavioural and cognitive tasks, on which they are trained and tested...

Year Published: 2025Topics: Emotion, Pain, & Sentience, Social Housing & CompanionshipAnimal Type: Pig

Citation: Kroell, M., Winckler, C., Hintze, S. 2025. By your side: How social support affects training duration, task performance and behaviour of pigs in a Judgement Bias Task. Animal Welfare 34, e25.

Guinea pig (Cavia porcellus) welfare: Associations between husbandry practices, human–animal interactions, and animal behaviour (2025)

Research on the welfare of pet guinea pigs and connections between their behaviour and husbandry practices is scarce. Through an online survey among 1181 German-speaking guinea pig caretakers, we investigated husbandry practices (including social composition, housing type, free roaming, enrichment,...

Year Published: 2025Topics: Environmental Enrichment, Housing, Human-Animal Interaction, Social Housing & CompanionshipAnimal Type: Guinea Pig, Rodent

Citation: Elsbacher, T., Sommese, A., Waiblinger, S. et al. 2025. Guinea pig (Cavia porcellus) welfare: Associations between husbandry practices, human–animal interactions, and animal behaviour. Animals 15(8), 1157.

A metric-based, meta-analytic appraisal of environmental enrichment efficacy in captive primates (2025)

Non-human primates (hereafter ‘primates') constitute a common group of animals in captivity but their captive maintenance involves ethical and husbandry issues, many of which can be addressed through environmental enrichment (hereafter ‘enrichment'). Enrichment is often applied in a trial-and-error fashion...

Year Published: 2025Topics: Environmental Enrichment, Social Housing & CompanionshipAnimal Type: Baboon, Capuchin, Chimpanzee, Gibbon, Lemur, Macaque, Marmoset, Nonhuman Primate, Other Nonhuman Primate, Owl Monkey, Squirrel Monkey, Vervet (African Green Monkey)

Citation: Duncan, L. M., Pillay, N. 2025. A metric-based, meta-analytic appraisal of environmental enrichment efficacy in captive primates. Animals 15(6), 799.

Hamster enrichment and social housing (2024)

Providing our animals with the best welfare possible is one of our main goals as Animal Technicians. As we want to deliver the most appropriate care for our hamsters, we have undertaken some research projects of our own to ensure...

Year Published: 2024Topics: Environmental Enrichment, Social Housing & CompanionshipAnimal Type: Hamster, Rodent

Citation: Devine, A., Boratyn, A. 2024. Hamster enrichment and social housing. Animal Technology and Welfare 23(3), 205–207.

Rabbit Behaviour, Health and Care

This book is an essential, thorough, very practical guide to understanding and caring for your rabbit. By following the advice in this book, both rabbit owners and veterinary health professionals report healthier and more content rabbits. Developed from the successful...

Year Published: 2015Topics: Housing, Husbandry & Management, Natural Behavior, Social Housing & CompanionshipAnimal Type: Rabbit

Citation: Buseth, M. E., Saunders, R. 2015. Rabbit Behaviour, Health and Care. CABI, Wallingford, Oxfordshire. 225 p.

A method to improve the housing of breeding rats used to produce pups for tissue (2025)

Rats are considered highly social animals. In the wild, they live in groups and develop complex social structures. Regrouping rats is considered stressful. We therefore wanted to keep animals in monogamous pairs so that they could develop a social bond...

Year Published: 2025Topics: Housing, Reproduction, Social Housing & CompanionshipAnimal Type: Rat, Rodent

Citation: Booth, K., King, J., Stephen, J. et al. 2025. A method to improve the housing of breeding rats used to produce pups for tissue. Animal Technology and Welfare 24(1), 62–65.

Psychosocial stress, glucocorticoids, and structural alterations in the tree shrew hippocampus

Animal models for chronic stress represent an indispensable preclinical approach to human pathology since clinical data point to a major role of psychological stress experiences, acute and/or chronic, to the development of behavioral and physiological disturbances. Chronic emotional arousal is...

Year Published: 2001Topics: Social Housing & CompanionshipAnimal Type: Tree Shrew

Citation: Fuchs, E., Flügge, G., Ohl, F. et al. 2001. Psychosocial stress, glucocorticoids, and structural alterations in the tree shrew hippocampus. Physiology & Behavior 73(3), 285–291.