Sentinel

Published December 2001

In the laboratory animal care field, a sentinel animal is a healthy animal living among the research animals that is routinely tested for the presence of disease. This allows for the non-testing of the valuable research animals themselves. An environment sentinel is an animal cage (usually a mouse microisolation cage) that is equipped with sensors for the measurement of ammonia, CO2, air flow, temperature and humidity. An environment sentinel fish tank would be another example for the monitoring of water quality.