Laura van den End
EXAMENVRAGEN
1. Caecotrophy
- Digestive strategy to gain extra nutrients: oral uptake of own faeces
- During night: faeces coated in mucus and taken up directly from the anus (rich in vitamine B
and K → If animals don’t do this, extra nutrients are needed)
- During the day: hard droppings
2. Ethogram
- Represents behavioral repertoire: frequency, duration, succession
- Complete list of behaviors that is visible: active behavior (sexual interactions), maintenance
behavior (nesting, feeding) and inactive behavior (sleeping)
3. Zoocentrism
- Opposite from antropocentrism: animals have moral standing
- Strong: zoocentrists follow principle of equality: rat = dog = pig = child
- Pay more attention to pain and discomfort of animals in experiments → moral principles and a
cost-benefit analysis is required for experiments
4. Refinement
- Happy animals make good science
- Housing, taking care, health and normal behavior: prevent diseases and death - attention for the
animals needs (cage enrichment) → increase wellbeing
- Well trained staff: training and education for animal caretakers, biotechnicians and project
leaders - handle animals in a correct way, known the needs of the animal
- Pain control, anesthesia en euthanasia: use appropriate pain control and anesthesia
- Determinant human endpoints → euthanasia is preformed by trained staff, method
adapted to the species
- Environmental enrichment: decreasing stress, increasing species specific behavior
- Alternatives must be at least as good as the system is has to replace, meet formal validating
criteria, completely evaluated and accepted by the users and the government
5. What is the effect on ventilation and odor (smell) on laboratory animals. How should
ventilation be organized? Why are ventilation and odors/smells so important for animal
welfare
- Ventilation is important for the environment of the animal, the air needs to be filtered, have
correct T, correct humidity, no blind corners - no draught
- There is separate ventilation for the housing and treatment rooms
- New environment (smells) can cause endocrine changes which are comparable to electric shock
- Homeostasis can become imbalanced
- Cage cleaning is necessary, inbreeding/transgenesis might have effect on behavior, some
animals should not be housed in the same room
6. Explain inbred strain
- Creating genetic uniformity in experiments
- Breeding closely related individuals; inbred coefficient = fraction of original heterozygous genes
that become homozygous. Growth fertility and vitality can decrease. Increase of recessive
detrimental genes can cause higher degree of mortality
- Can be done by different strains:
- F1 hybrid: cross between 2 inbred strains. Produce genetically and phenotypically uniform
animals → hybrid: more resistant to disease, survive better under stress, live longer have
larger litters. → used for tissue transplants from parental strains
- Co-isogenic: spontaneous mutation in inbred strain → diff 1 gene of original strain. Can be
maintained next to original strain → research in particular gene + control group available
Laboratory animal science 1
, Laura van den End
- Congenic: introducing GOI via cross-intercross-backcross: inbred strain X D strain →
intercross-backcrossing (at least 10 generations) ⇒ get rid of extra genes/mutations.
Double congenic strains are used to study gene-interactions
- Chromosome-substitution strain: chromosome is replaced by homologous chromosome of
other inbred strain by repeated backcrossing.
- Recombinant inbed strain: produced by mating individuals from F2 generation of a cross
between 2 inbred strains → after 20 generations, each strain represents a fixed set of
randomly assorted genes from both progenitors.
- Recombinant congenic: series of inbred strains which are derived from the 2nd or 3rd
backcross generation of 2 unrelated progenitor strains (one serving as background and the
other as donor) → after 20 generations, genome of each of the resulting strain will contain
genomic material from the background strain and a small portion of the donor strain
7. What is health screening and why is it important?
- Checking the animal welfare
- Based on biological parameters: physiological criteria (stress hormones, immunological
status), sounds, physical health (pre-necropsy examination, necropsy, bacteriology,
serology, parasitology)
- Based on behavior (Q49)
- Direct methods: isolation/grow the agent, visualization of the agent, PCR
- Indirect methods: demonstration of Ab, seroconservation after 3-4 weeks
- Animals from the colony: young have more parasites and older for detecting the history of
chronic infections
- Sentinels: animals that are brought in to the colony to test
- Animal facility is tested 4x a year
- ⇒ prevent diseases and increase animal wellbeing
8. Lee-Boot effect
- Seen in mice and rats
- When females are kept in a group, they tend to lose their poly-oestric cycle (anoestrus)
9. Local anesthesia why sometimes adrenalin
- Anesthesia = pathological sleep (reversible, predictable, verifiable) = repress consciousness and
pain perception temporarily
- Effect limited to part of the body → no loss of consciousness so not really an anesthetic.
- Superficial administration via droplet, cream, gel or spray → surface must take up the
anesthetic: mucus membranes like eyes, trachea
- (Intra- and sub-dermal) infiltration anesthesia: anesthetize nerve fibers, often some adrenalin
is added to cause vasoconstriction → decrease blood flow (drainage is slowed down and less
blood loss)
- Regional or conduction anesthesia: perineurial injection (complete innervation area of nerve) or
spinal block (complex of nerves; epidural injection between last lumbar and first sacral vertebrae
outside the dura mater)
- Advantages: minimal influence on normal physiological processes outside the anesthetized area
+ via a catheter, the anesthetic can be administered during a longer time → pain killing possible
(low concentration to preserve locomotion)
10. Analgesia + possible side effects
- Pain killing → can be administered even before the operation → administration can be oral
subcutaneous, intramuscular and intravenous
- Central acting: narcotic (morphine), side effects:
- Sedation vs excitement (e.g. cats, rats)
- Cardiovascular and respiratory effects: bradycardia, hypotension, dilation peripheral blood
vessels (heat loss), changes to heat regulation, respiratory depression
- Gastrointestinal effects: decreased propulsive movement, decreased appetite
- Immune system effects: subtle effects
Laboratory animal science 2