Lab rats go wild in Oxfordshire: A documentary film proves that laboratory rats can still survive in the wild

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http://www.nature.com/nsu/040202/040202-2.html

 

Lab rats go wild in Oxfordshire

A documentary film proves that laboratory rats can still survive in the wild.

03 February 2004

 

MARK PEPLOW

 

An award-winning film has created some unusual

stars: lab rats. The documentary, which follows

75 lab rats after they were released into an

Oxfordshire farmyard, has surprised biomedical

researchers by proving that lab rats quickly

recover their wild behaviour once liberated.

 

Manuel Berdoy, an animal behaviourist from Oxford

University, didn't set out to make a documentary.

He was simply curious about whether lab rats

retain some of their wild instincts. So he took

75 docile rats that had spent their lives in the

laboratory and released them into the wild.

 

Berdoy expected the rats to cope with their new

conditions, but he was impressed by how quickly

they adapted. The rats found water, food and

hiding holes almost immediately. They started to

establish social hierarchies within days, and it

was only a few weeks before they had established

an extensive pattern of paths across the colony.

Although the rats had spent their whole lives

being fed on pellets, the females immediately

prepared for pregnancy by foraging and storing

appropriate food.

 

" They went from shuffling, like they do in a

cage, to hopping around just like wild rats

within a few days, " says Paul Flecknell, an

veterinary scientist from Newcastle University

who has seen the film.

 

The results won't surprise animal behaviourists,

says Flecknell, but many biomedical researchers

have been amazed by the film. Most believe that

an animal that hasn't been outside a lab for 200

generations will be incapable of fending for

itself in the wild, he says.

 

" This shows that while we can take the animal

from the wild, we have not have taken the wild

out of the animal, " says Berdoy.

 

Berdoy filmed the experiment to add a little

something extra to his conference reports. But

the footage proved so popular that he decided to

edit it into a documentary-style film. He called

it The Laboratory Rat: A Natural History.

 

The result has taken a small part of the film

world by storm, netting awards at the Jackson

Hole Wildlife Film Festival in the USA - often

called the wildlife equivalent of Cannes - and

the Living Europe film festival in Sweden. " I

didn't expect it to have an impact like this, "

says Berdoy.

 

The good life

 

Flecknell believes the findings imply that rats

would have a 'better' life in the lab if provided

with a more natural environment. " Researchers

ignore the wild side of these animals, and that's

not good for their welfare, " says Flecknell.

 

Cages can be made more like a field by adding

sticks to gnaw on and tunnels to run through. But

such environmental enrichment appears to alter

the results of experiments. A complex cage tends

to produce more individualised animals that have

a broader range of behaviour, says Flecknell. And

that broad range makes it more difficult to

distinguish between control and experimental

groups or discern trends in behaviour.

 

To avoid this, researchers would have to use

larger numbers of animals, says Flecknell. And

that introduces an interesting moral dilemma, he

says - is it better to cage fewer rats in poor

welfare conditions, or many more rats in a better

environment? No one yet has an answer to that, he

says.

 

© Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2004

 

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