Baseline Recordings

The week before surgery, all rabbits were placed individually in the filming arena (2 × 2 m: NKP cages, UK) which contained only sawdust bedding. The arena consisted of 3 clear Perspex sides with a mesh divider splitting into two filming pens (1 × 2 m). Two HD video cameras (DCR-VX2100E, Sony, Japan) were placed at a fixed distance from each of the two Perspex walls of each filming pen and remotely operated from outside the room at all times (Figure 1). The rabbits were allowed 5 min to habituate to placement in the filming pen and then filming commenced for 15 min. A companion rabbit, which was not scheduled for surgery at that time, was placed in the adjoining pen, separated by the mesh wall, to simulate a home pen environment. Each animal was recorded twice at baseline; once in the morning (Baseline AM) and once in the afternoon (Baseline PM). These two recording times were selected to be time matched with the post-surgery recording times. On the same day, animals in Batch 2 also had home pen footage recorded during the dark phase of their photoperiod (19:00–07:00) by placing GoPro Hero 5.0 cameras above each home pen to record the activity of each animal.

Set up of the filming area, showing pen layout and camera position.