. "Appendix: Tools to Monitor and Assess Health Status and Well-Being in Stress and Distress." Recognition and Alleviation of Distress in Laboratory Animals. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2008.
The following HTML text is provided to enhance online
readability. Many aspects of typography translate only awkwardly to HTML.
Please use the page image
as the authoritative form to ensure accuracy.
Recognition and Alleviation of Distress in Laboratory Animals
are introduced by gender, age, physiological state, genetics, and genetic modification of the animals.
The first three tables below contain behavioral categories and descriptions of physiologic activities in which rhesus macaques, common marmosets, and rabbits engage. In order to determine what kind of behavior it is that an animal exhibits, one needs to be knowledgeable in the ethology and husbandry of the species in question. For example, aggression may be a signal for fear or pain, but may also be observed in lactating mothers protecting their nest. Determining the variation of the behavior from normalcy is a matter of training, studying, and observation.
TABLE A-1 An ethogram for Macaca mulatta (rhesus macaque)
BehavioralCategories
RecordedBehavior
Definitions
Aggressive behaviors
Facial threat displays
Open mouth face ± bared teeth or vocalization
Aggressive approach
Stiff approach, attacking run
Physical aggression
Slap, grab, biting, or wrestling
Submissive behaviors
Facial submissive display
Bared teeth grin ± vocalization
Avoidance
Avoid, flee, leave, displaced
Active appeasement
Groom present, lip smacking
Affiliative behaviors
Affiliative contact
Contact sit (within arms reach), embrace, touch
Passive grooming
Being groomed
Active grooming
Grooming other animal
Sexual behaviors
Sexual contact
Genital present/inspection, mounting
Appetitive behaviors
Foraging
Food search, eating, drinking
Other activities
Active
Locomotion, enrichment use, self-grooming
Abnormal behaviors
Abnormal behaviors
Stereotypies, autoaggression
Inactive
Inactive
Lying, huddling, sitting, sleeping
Vigilance
Monitoring others
Visually following other individuals
Reprinted from Augustsson, A. and J. Hau. 1999. A simple ethological monitoring system to assess social stress in group-housed laboratory rhesus macaques. J Med Primatol 28:84-90.
