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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Anim. Sci.
Sec. Animal Welfare and Policy
Volume 5 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fanim.2024.1423814
This article is part of the Research Topic Integration of Behavioural Ecology and Animal Welfare View all 3 articles

Personality matters -The interplay between consistent individual differences and mouse welfare in female C57BL6/J mice

Provisionally accepted
Marlene G. Sroka Marlene G. Sroka 1*Oliver Ambree Oliver Ambree 2Celina Dohmen Celina Dohmen 1,2Rupert Palme Rupert Palme 3Sylvia Kaiser Sylvia Kaiser 1S. Helene Richter S. Helene Richter 1
  • 1 University of Münster, Münster, Germany
  • 2 Osnabrück University, Osnabrück, Lower Saxony, Germany
  • 3 University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Vienna, Vienna, Austria

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    To ensure good welfare of animals in human hands, it is essential to modify housing conditions according to the animals’ needs. Traditionally, the effects of such modifications are studied by means of group-level comparisons, thereby widely neglecting consistent inter-individual differences (i.e., so-called ‘animal personalities’). However, as animals with distinct personality types might differ in their environmental needs and hence react differently to the same environment, such systematic inter-individual differences might have important welfare consequences. This becomes particularly apparent under laboratory conditions, where animals are typically housed under highly standardized and barren environments. Against this background, we here aim to investigate personality-dependent welfare consequences in response to different housing conditions in laboratory mice. Female C57BL/6J mice were characterized for their personality type in exploration behavior and the most and the least explorative individuals were set up in either simple or in highly complex housing conditions that included constantly changing environmental enrichment items. We monitored individual welfare by studying behavioral, physiological, and immunological outcome measures. Besides personality-dependent differences in immune parameters and overall improved welfare under complex housing conditions, we indeed found hints that individual mice were differently affected in their welfare depending on the specific combination of personality type and housing condition. Specifically, highly explorative mice appeared to be more adversely affected by simple housing, but also profited more from complex housing compared to low explorative mice. These findings indicate that welfare promoting adjustments do not necessarily benefit all individuals equally and therefore, call for a shift of perspectives in the evaluation of animal welfare.

    Keywords: animal personality, Animal Welfare, Immune System, Housing, environmental enrichment, laboratory mice

    Received: 26 Apr 2024; Accepted: 25 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Sroka, Ambree, Dohmen, Palme, Kaiser and Richter. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Marlene G. Sroka, University of Münster, Münster, Germany

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