Publications by authors named "Saskia Arndt"

Article Synopsis
  • Firework aversion is common in cats and dogs, leading to behaviors like hiding, fleeing, and social withdrawal, which can negatively impact animal welfare.
  • * Our research in The Netherlands involved 3,009 dogs and 622 cats, examining their firework-related behaviors, early life factors, and owners' beliefs about how they influence their pets' reactions.
  • * We confirmed that poor early life experiences increase the likelihood of firework aversion in dogs, and found that most pet owners hear fireworks regularly throughout the year, yet many interventions for this aversion are reported to have little lasting effect.
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A wide range of animal taxa, including vertebrates and invertebrates, are controlled or kept by humans. They may be used as pets, for recreation, sport and hobbies, as working animals, as producers of animal-derived (food) products or as biomedical models in research. There is a need for clear guidance on the treatment of animals, regardless of their phylogenetic distance from humans.

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Background: Rodent management with lethal methods (e.g., rodenticides) comes with downsides for rodent welfare, the environment and non-target species.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study investigates the attitudes of Dutch pest control clients towards rodent welfare and control methods, revealing significant differences based on the client's sector, particularly noting agriculture's harsher views.
  • - An online survey conducted with 248 clients highlighted that agricultural respondents generally prioritize rodent control effectiveness over animal welfare, viewing rats and mice negatively and expressing low tolerance for their presence.
  • - The findings aim to inform the development of more ethical rodent management strategies and encourage a better understanding and collaboration between pest controllers and their clients concerning animal welfare considerations.
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Dogs in shelters are faced with the challenge of adapting to a kennel after relinquishment and to a novel home after adoption. To measure adaptability of dogs, more feasible behavioural and physiological parameters need to be validated in different contexts. To evaluate nocturnal activity as an indicator of adaptability, we compared nocturnal activity, urinary cortisol:creatinine ratio (UCCR), and body weight changes of sheltered dogs the first period after intake in the shelter and after adoption.

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It is crucial for good dog welfare that humans be able to accurately and adequately recognize and meet dogs' needs. However, humans may do a poor job of recognizing dogs' needs due to their tendency to anthropomorphize. The aim of this study was to develop a framework for dogs' needs that would help humans to recognize and meet their actual needs, thereby improving dogs' quality of life.

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Every shelter dog is faced with the challenge to adapt to a kennel environment. To monitor the welfare of individual shelter dogs, evaluating behavioural and physiological parameters, potentially useful as indicators for adaptability of individual dogs is crucial. Nocturnal activity, i.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study analyzed bite risk assessment reports for dogs confiscated after biting incidents, comparing data from 2008-2010 and 2020-2022, identifying 30 dog ownership factors of concern.
  • - A significant increase in reports citing multiple ownership factors was found in the later time frame, indicating a trend in dog ownership issues related to aggression.
  • - Key factors linked to biting incidents included multiple dog households, neglect, past aggressiveness of owners, and antisocial behaviors, highlighting the need for better policies and preventive measures regarding dog ownership.
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  • Dairy cattle are commonly disbudded or dehorned, yet the role of horns in thermoregulation is not well understood.
  • This study utilized infrared thermography to assess the temperature of horns, eyes, and ears in dairy cows, finding that horn temperature increased with heat load, suggesting horns help dissipate heat.
  • Dehorned cows exhibited higher eye temperatures, indicating potential physiological impacts from horn removal, but the study found no significant temperature changes related to rumination, highlighting the need for cautious interpretation regarding the consequences of dehorning.
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Translating theoretical concepts of animal welfare into quantitative assessment protocols is an ongoing challenge. Glucocorticoids (GCs) are frequently used as physiological measure in welfare assessment. The interpretation of levels of GCs and especially their relation to welfare, however, is not as straightforward, questioning the informative power of GCs.

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Shelter dogs are exposed to a variety of stressors. Among non-invasive techniques, hair cortisol concentration (HCC) is suggested an easy to collect biomarker for giving insight into long-term stress responses. We evaluated HCC as an indicator of long-term cortisol responses in dogs in an animal shelter over different chronological time points during sheltering and after adoption.

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To start milk production, dairy goats need to give birth at least once. While most female kids are reared to become the next generation of dairy goats, only a small proportion of male kids (buck kids) are reared with reproduction aims. The market for buck kid meat, especially within Northern European countries, is currently relatively small compared to the number of bucks born.

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Inter-individual variability in quantitative traits is believed to potentially inflate the quality of results in animal experimentation. Yet, to our knowledge this effect has not been empirically tested. Here we test whether inter-individual variability in emotional response within mouse inbred strains affects the outcome of a pharmacological experiment.

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Inter-individual variability in behavioral and physiological response has become a well-established phenomenon in animal models of anxiety and other disorders. Such variability is even demonstrated within mouse inbred strains. A recent study showed that adaptive and non-adaptive anxiety phenotypes (measured as habituation and/or sensitization of anxiety responses) may differ within cohorts of 129 mice.

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Background: Despite extensive environmental standardization and the use of genetically and microbiologically defined mice of similar age and sex, individuals of the same mouse inbred strain commonly differ in quantitative traits. This is a major issue as it affects the quality of experimental results. Standard analysis practices summarize numerical data by means and associated measures of dispersion, while individual values are ignored.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Feather pecking in the commercial egg industry results in economic losses and welfare issues, with most research focused on practical solutions rather than understanding underlying causes.
  • - The existing studies mainly address the effects of feather pecking on affected birds, neglecting the welfare problems faced by the pecking birds themselves.
  • - There is a critical need for more basic research to better understand the behavioral needs and capabilities of hens, which will help tackle the welfare challenges associated with feather pecking.
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Objective: To investigate the clinical and physiological effects of intravenous (IV) alfaxalone alone or in combination with buprenorphine, butorphanol or tramadol premedication in marmosets.

Study Design: Prospective, randomized, blinded, crossover design.

Animals: Nine healthy marmosets (391 ± 48 g, 3.

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A number of mutilating procedures, such as dehorning in cattle and goats and beak trimming in laying hens, are common in farm animal husbandry systems in an attempt to prevent or solve problems, such as injuries from horns or feather pecking. These procedures and other practices, such as early maternal separation, overcrowding, and barren housing conditions, raise concerns about animal welfare. Efforts to ensure or improve animal welfare involve adapting the animal to its environment, i.

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The Fawn hooded (FH) rat is commonly used in biomedical research. It is widely acknowledged that the FH rat has a bleeding disorder; leading to abundant bleedings. Although this bleeding disorder is investigated to model the storage pool defect; its impact on commonly performed invasive laboratory procedures has not yet been described.

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This protocol describes the modified hole board (mHB), which combines features from a traditional hole board and open field and is designed to measure multiple dimensions of unconditioned behavior in small laboratory mammals (e.g., mice, rats, tree shrews and small primates).

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To enable the development of effective treatments for dementias such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), it is important to establish valid animal models of cognitive impairments. Scopolamine is widely used to induce cognitive deficits in animal models of AD, but also causes non-cognitive side effects. We assessed whether biperiden, a selective antagonist of M1 muscarinic receptors, which are predominantly expressed in brain areas involved in cognitive processes, causes cognitive deficits without inducing peripheral side-effects.

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The vocal repertoire in common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus) has been assumed to consist not only of vocalizations audible to humans but also of ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs). The use of USVs to socially indicate distress has not been evaluated in this species, however. The authors analyzed the ultrasonic vocal repertoire of the common marmoset under normal housing conditions, under various experimental manipulations intended to elicit positive or negative emotional responses and during stressful experiences including blood draw and exposure to a perceived predator.

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Various protocols to induce chronic stress in rodents are being used to determine the effects and underlying mechanisms of prolonged stress experience. Recently, a novel chronic social stress (CSS) protocol has been developed for mice where social instability in adolescence and early adulthood is induced. This protocol has been shown to cause an increase in HPA-axis activity and acute avoidance behaviour in the elevated plus maze.

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Most laboratory animals used in research are vendor-bred and transferred to research facilities. Transfer procedures might have considerable and unintended effects on research results. In the present study we compared physiological and behavioral parameters before and after external and internal transfer, as well as between transferred and non-transferred Wistar rats.

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When using rats in pain research, strain-related differences in outcomes of tests for pain and nociception are acknowledged. However, very little is known about the specific characteristics of these strain differences. In this study four phylogenetically distant inbred rat strains, i.

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