Rats seem indifferent between their own scent-marked homecages and clean cages
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Previous large-scale, long-term studies suggest that rat welfare is little affected by cage-cleaning frequency. Here, we investigate this further using a preference test: arguably a more sensitive welfare indicator than those used previously. Nine pairs of rats were each housed in two interconnected cages of differing cleanliness. One cage was cleaned every 3–4 days, while the other remained uncleaned for 18 days. All rats were handled at each cage-cleaning (regardless of which cage they chose) so that this aspect of the cleaning routine remained consistent. Furthermore, ammonia build-up was negligible. We could thus see whether rats prefer their own scent-marks over clean bedding, without the confounds of differential handling or the potential harm induced by ammonia. Dwelling, resting, feeding, drinking, defecation, and ammonia concentrations were compared between the two cages. None were found to differ significantly between the cages over the course of the experiment. Power tests and confidence intervals support the conclusion that the rats had no meaningful preference for self-scented, familiar areas over clean areas. A weak preference cannot be ruled out, due to the small sample and the space limitations within laboratory cages. Also, the lack of ammonia means that the threshold at which rats would start to avoid soiled areas that do generate this compound remains undetermined. Nevertheless, together with previous studies showing no clear effects of cage-cleaning frequency on rat welfare, these choice tests indicate that it is unlikely that olfactory disruption during cage-cleaning is an important welfare concern for stable non-breeding groups of rats.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".