ARTICLES Behavioral Assessment of Intermittent Wheel Running and Individual Housing in Mice in the Laboratory

Physical cage enrichment—exercise devices for rodents in the laboratory—often in-cludes running wheels. This study compared responses of mice in enriched physical and social conditions and in standard social conditions to wheel running, individual housing, and open-field test. The study divided into 6 groups, 48 female BALB/c mice group housed in enriched and standard conditions. On alternate days, the study exposed 2 groups to individual running wheel cages. It intermittently separated from their cage mates and housed individually 2 groups with no running wheels; 2 control groups remained in enriched or standard condition cages. There were no significant differences between enriched and standard group housed mice in alternate days’ wheel running. Over time, enriched, group housed mice ran less. Both groups re-sponded similarly to individual housing. In open-field test, mice exposed to individ-ual housing without running wheel moved more and faster than wheel running and home cage control mice. They have lower body weights than group housed and wheel running mice. Intermittent withdrawal of individual housing affects the animals more than other commodities. Wheel running normalizes some effects of intermittent sepa-ration from the enriched, social home cage. Housing conditions of animals in the laboratory have been influenced by the knowledge that environmental factors can affect the well being of nonhuman an