The Animal House (AH) is the backbone of research activities related to life sciences especially Zoological sciences of Bodoland University, Assam. The AH of Bodoland University was established in the year 2019. The Dean, Faculty of Science and Technology, Bodoland University is by default the faculty in-charge of the Animal House. The culture, rearing and maintenance of small laboratory experimental animals required by the researchers of various departments of the institute are carried out in the AH facility. The Institutional Animal Ethics Committee, Bodoland Universitywas constituted specifically to address scientific and ethical considerations of animal use for research. Prof. Jatin Sarmah, Dept. of Biotechnology, Bodoland University is the Chairperson of this committee, which advises the students, teachers/researchers on facilities, policies and practices concerning the care and use of animals.

The AH was established with the objective to boost the teaching, training and research requiring high quality laboratory animals in emergent field of experimental biology, cell molecular biology, pharmacology, microbiology and aquaculture. The facility is kept in accordance with the standards established by the Institutional Animal Ethics Committee which works on the guidelines of Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals (CPCSEA) for breeding and conducting experiment on small animals.The main activities of the AH are to culture, rear and maintain different laboratory experimental animals such as mice, rats, rabbits, and fish etc. for various research purposes.

At present the facility has ten air-conditioned rooms with continuous water and electricity supply. There is also a caretaker room. Periodic health monitoring of the animals kept in the AH is carried out to ascertain their health status. Care is taken to keep the animals healthy and disease free. As of now the facility houses rats, mice and fish. Each species is kept in separate individual rooms to avoid disease transmission and inter-species conflicts. The animals are kept under under controlled environmental conditions of Temperature (22-26°C), Relative Humidity (60±10%), 12 hr alternate light and dark cycle, and fresh air exchange. Feeding, watering, restraining, cage cleaning etc. are maintained regularly.

The research team including Mr. Sanraja Mushahary, Ph.D. scholar in the Department of Zoology under the supervision of Dr. Khangembam Bronson Kumar, Assistant Professor department of Zoology, Bodoland University is using the AH facility for the culture and rearing of different fish species required for his research work. Species like Heteropnuestes fossilis, Anabas testudineus etc are being culture at larval stages for investigating the nutritional physiology and biochemistry of the air breathing species under controlled conditions. The fish culture unit is equipped with 18 culture aquariums (50L capacity) for the purpose of culturing different fish species required for difefrent experimental works.

The team under the supervision of Dr. Hemen Sarma, Associate Professor, Department of Botany, Bodoland University is also actively using the AH facility for experiments related to microbiology and environmental bioremediation. Dr. Manoranjan Boro, Assistant Professor, department of Biotechnology, Bodoland University is also using the AH facility for his experimental works related to knockout mice under ICMR funded project.