Assistant Laboratory Animal Technician (ALAT) Practice Exam

Maintaining proper temperatures for laboratory animals helps in reducing what?

1. Breeding success

2. Stress levels

3. Disease incidents

4. Feeding costs

The correct answer is: Stress levels

Maintaining proper temperatures for laboratory animals is critical for minimizing stress levels. Animals are ectothermic or endothermic, meaning they require specific environmental conditions to regulate their body temperature effectively. When the temperature is outside the optimal range, animals can experience physiological and behavioral stress responses. This stress can affect their health, behavior, and overall well-being, potentially leading to adverse effects such as compromised immune function, inhibited growth, or changes in reproductive performance. By ensuring that laboratory animals are housed in environments with regulated temperatures, caretakers can significantly reduce these stress levels, promoting healthier and more stable conditions for the animals. This focus on animal welfare is essential not only for ethical reasons but also for the validity of research outcomes, as stressed animals may not exhibit behaviors or responses that are consistent with non-stressed counterparts. The other options do not directly connect to the impact temperature control has on animal stress, making stress levels the primary concern in this context.