The sample size is tiny (8 rabbits), but you'd think it wouldn't require an army of rabbits to figure out whether something hurts or not. They measured pain/disturbance in a number of ways (heart rate, rate of grooming afterwards, etc), and compared tattooing with handling and fake-tattooing, and found that (surprise!) it hurts unless you put some analgesic cream on first.
That's more of interest to 4H groups: what caught my eye was the idea of measuring the rabbit's pain by its grimace. There already existed a method of measuring mouse pain by mouse grimaces; this has been adapted to rabbits, and it looks like it works, at least for low levels of pain (they didn't try to inflict anything harsh).
So, is the rabbit squeezing its eyes shut, or flattening (sucking in?) its cheeks, or V-ing its nostrils, or laying its whiskers or ears back? Something is probably hurting it.
Did it just go into full kick and jump mode? You goofed trimming the nails...
No comments:
Post a Comment