Have frog, will travel,
yet what impact on welfare?
Best to avoid moss.
Transporting animals for research, agricultural, conservation or leisure reasons can involve a range of potential stressors. It’s therefore important to be aware of the impact of transportation on animals so as to minimise any negative effects.
African clawed frogs are a common laboratory animal, used for a range of developmental studies. Holmes et al (2018) investigated the impact of transportation between research facilities. They found that transportation and re-housing had a negative impact across a short- and longer-term, with corticosterone (a ‘stress hormone’) remaining high for 1 week and body mass remaining low for 5 weeks after transportation. Investigating further the researchers found evidence that being transported in moss might be the least preferable transport medium, with water or sponge appearing to be more suitable.
Original research: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ygcen.2018.03.015
Interested in African clawed frogs? Check out these other Xenopus sciku: ‘Clawed frogs indicate‘, ‘Xenopus enrichment‘, ‘Fungal culprit‘ and ‘Reservoir or predator‘.