ABSTRACT
Most research involving the use of zebrafish requires frequent handling of the animals. During their lifetime in a facility, fish are routinely netted and transferred from one tank to another, and certain commonly employed experimental manipulations, such as strip spawning for in vitro fertilization or fin clipping for genotyping, require direct manual manipulation. Although most laboratory strains of zebrafish have become domesticated to the extent that they are more tolerant of these kinds of disturbances (Spence et al. 2008), it is important to be mindful of the fact that all forms of handling are stressful for the animals. Therefore, these activities should be minimized to the greatest possible extent, and all people working with the fish should be trained how to properly handle them when the need arises.
