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Managerial:

Swatting an Animal?

Reader Question: Recently one of my lab techs was bitten by a small animal, and in a burst of irritation the employee responded by swatting the animal a couple of times. I feel he overreacted and that his treatment of the animal was harsh and unfair. As the PI, how should I handle this situation?

Expert Comment:

It sounds like your technician needs to be educated in appropriate handling procedures and how to react to aggressive behavior in animals.

First, swatting or hitting laboratory animals is never appropriate. Most laboratory-animal aggression is a consequence of pain, fear, or both. While people often feel they should respond to aggression with aggression, thinking that hitting the animal will decrease the likelihood of future aggression, the opposite happens. Swatting the animal causes pain and fear. Through the process of Classical Conditioning, the animal then associates the person or some aspect of him/her (e.g., a white lab coat) with pain. As a consequence, in the future the animal is more likely to be afraid of the technician and thus more likely to bite. This response can generalize to multiple people, or to objects such as white laboratory coats. If stimulus generalization happens, the action of one person can cause the animal to respond with fear and aggression toward other people in the future.

You should review the events leading up to the bite in detail. Something about what was happening — perhaps the way the technician was handling the animal ‑ led to the bite. Discuss how to handle animals differently in the future to prevent a repetition.

Did the bite happen while the animal was experiencing a painful procedure (e.g., an injection)? If that is the case, protocols for animal handling during painful procedures need to be reviewed. Also, establish clear rules regarding inappropriate handling of animals. Do not simply assume that technicians know that swatting, hitting, kicking, holding animals excessively tightly, etc., are all unacceptable behaviors. List them and be explicitly clear that such actions, as well as being inhumane and in violation of animal welfare, compromise the quality of research.

Finally, you might consider initiating a proactive program to make the animals you are responsible for less fearful. Research has shown that animals, including laboratory animals, that experience regular, gentle, pleasant handling, are easier to handle and less likely to react to human handling with undesirable behaviors than animals that do not receive such handling. Such a program can also be a rewarding experience for technicians.

Comments by Sharon Crowell-Davis DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACVB, a veterinary behaviorist on faculty at the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine.

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