# Do you test male and female mice/rats at the same time in the same place, or separate over time?

**URL:** <https://forum.painresearcher.net/t/do-you-test-male-and-female-mice-rats-at-the-same-time-in-the-same-place-or-separate-over-time/29>\
**Category:** Animal Behavior and Models\
**Created:** [June 27, 2016, 6:21pm UTC](https://forum.painresearcher.net/t/do-you-test-male-and-female-mice-rats-at-the-same-time-in-the-same-place-or-separate-over-time/29 "2016-06-27T18:21:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![ram\_kandasamy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b77776/32.png) [@ram\_kandasamy](https://forum.painresearcher.net/u/ram_kandasamy)\
**Post date:** [July 4, 2016, 11:55pm UTC](https://forum.painresearcher.net/t/do-you-test-male-and-female-mice-rats-at-the-same-time-in-the-same-place-or-separate-over-time/29/4 "2016-07-04T23:55:00Z")

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What I gathered from the paper is that these changes appear to be related to stress-induced analgesia. Luis’ approach seems like it would cause the least amount of stress. My thinking is that testing animals in the manner that they are housed (i.e., with cage mates) will be the least stressful. Alex’s point of testing females on the same rack may or may not introduce a variety of issues. However, this is just my overly simple way of getting at this issue.

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