Anna Ratuski’s Story
Thesis
Environmental enrichment for rats and mice housed in laboratories
About
Working as an animal care technician in a research facility during my undergraduate degree sparked my interest in improving the lives of laboratory animals. I first joined the Animal Welfare Program as a research assistant after receiving an NSERC Undergraduate Research Award in 2017. I began my PhD research in January 2018. My projects focused on the concept of environmental enrichment and strategies to improve housing for rodents living in laboratories. I ran experiments on altering housing to allow breeding rats and mice to spend time away from their litters, and providing conventionally-housed laboratory mice with access to large, complex playpen environments. My work demonstrated that there are welfare benefits to housing rodents with resources that allow for more diverse or motivated behaviour, but not all strategies are equally impactful. During my PhD, I was also involved in research related to mouse aggression, rodent euthanasia, and social science work (asking people how they feel about animal welfare issues). My advice to current graduate students would be to take advantage of the multi-disciplinary and collaborative environment offered by the Animal Welfare Program — there are so many opportunities to learn about topics and skills outside of your own research.
I have a wide variety of animal welfare interests; my current research focuses on issues related to the use of animals in science. I am continuing on in this area of research as a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Comparative Medicine at Stanford University.
Education
BSc, Dalhousie University
PhD in Applied Animal Biology, UBC