Animals should be provided with appropriate environmental enrichment. Rats can be provided with tubes or boxes for nesting. Nylabones or other objects for chewing, balls, and other items to move around the cage are also helpful distractions. Simply placing a paper towel on the wire top of a rat's cage will entice the rat to pull the towel into the cage and shred it. It is essential to realize that rats will chew almost anything placed in their cage, so care needs to be taken to choose objects that will not cause injury.
Supplementary treat foods can be rewarded after handling or scattered around the cage to induce foraging behavior. However, careful thought should first be given to the impact of the content of any food on experimental data.
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