Research data · Pain and nociception

Tail flick

Name: Tail flick in published research
Creator: ConductScience
Published: 2026-11-10

From 2021 to 2025, 545 animal research papers mentioned the tail flick in their title or abstract, ranking it 23rd of the 90 tests we track.

That is 33% fewer than the 809 papers of 2011 to 2015. Papers that mention any of the 90 tests rose 22% over the same span. The 2021 to 2025 count may run low because of a dip in PubMed's indexing, explained under the year chart.

Shop the apparatus See all 90 tests

545 animal research papers from 2021 to 2025 mentioned the test

33% fewer papers than in 2011 to 2015

23rd of the 90 tests by papers from 2021 to 2025

52% of these papers used mice and 50% used rats

Papers by year

Animal research papers that mention the tail flick, by year, 2001 to 2026

The 2026 bar counts papers added to PubMed by November 8, 2026.

Papers in a full year
2026 so far

Show the counts for each year

Papers by year
Year	Papers
2001	164
2002	132
2003	178
2004	151
2005	181
2006	145
2007	156
2008	150
2009	146
2010	148
2011	169
2012	142
2013	169
2014	174
2015	155
2016	135
2017	119
2018	107
2019	114
2020	139
2021	131
2022	110
2023	90
2024	105
2025	109
2026 (part year)	84

Papers that mention the tail flick fell from 131 in 2021 to 90 in 2023, then rose to 109 in 2025. Papers that PubMed indexed under the MeSH heading Animals also fell and rose, from 200,221 in 2021 to 156,447 in 2023 and 235,479 in 2025. We take each paper's species from PubMed's indexing whenever it names one, so part of this dip may come from the indexing rather than from fewer studies.

Papers that mention the tail flick in mice and in rats, by year, 2001 to 2025

Mouse
Rat

Mouse Rat

Show the counts for each year and species

Papers by year, mice and rats
Year	Mouse	Rat
2001	73	108
2002	68	74
2003	93	100
2004	77	96
2005	78	122
2006	70	85
2007	77	89
2008	79	82
2009	76	85
2010	82	83
2011	95	94
2012	70	89
2013	88	98
2014	84	102
2015	81	92
2016	74	73
2017	72	66
2018	49	61
2019	57	67
2020	68	74
2021	77	59
2022	57	58
2023	37	50
2024	54	53
2025	60	53

Which species the papers used

Each bar is a share of the 545 papers from 2021 to 2025. A paper can use more than one species, so the shares can add to more than 100%.

Species

Mouse

285 52%

Rat

273 50%

Other animals

18 3%

Zebrafish

3 1%

Fruit fly

2 under 1%

Nonhuman primate

2 under 1%

“Other animals” counts papers that use none of the other species in this chart.

Strains and genetic lines

Strain names come from the MeSH terms PubMed adds when it indexes a paper. PubMed has indexed 430 of the 545 papers, so each bar is a share of those 430.

Wistar rats

90 21%

Sprague-Dawley rats

67 16%

C57BL mice

45 10%

BALB/c mice

15 3%

Knockout mice

7 2%

ICR mice

6 1%

Transgenic mice

4 1%

Other inbred mice

3 1%

A paper indexed under two of these headings, such as knockout mice and a strain, counts under both.

Disease models these papers study

Each bar counts the papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention the tail flick and study that disease model, with its share of the 545 papers. The model comes from a paper's MeSH terms. For a paper PubMed has not indexed, it comes from PubTator 3, NCBI's text-mining service, when that service finds the disease in the title or abstract. A paper can count under more than one model.

Papers from 2021 to 2025 by disease model

Pain conditions

293 54%

Diabetes

28 5%

Substance use disorders

27 5%

14 3%

12 2%

12 2%

10 2%

Cognitive impairment and dementia

6 1%

Epilepsy and seizures

6 1%

Alzheimer disease

4 1%

Tests mentioned alongside the tail flick

Each bar counts the papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention both tests, with its share of the 545 papers that mention the tail flick.

Papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention both tests

141 26%

76 14%

65 12%

53 10%

37 7%

27 5%

21 4%

18 3%

The most cited papers from 2021 to 2025

These papers from 2021 to 2025 mention the tail flick and have the most citations, as counted by NIH's iCite on November 5, 2026. We show one of the five most cited papers and leave out four because of words in their titles.

Central and peripheral pain intervention by Ophiorrhizarugosa leaves: Potential underlying mechanisms and insight into the role of pain modulators.
J Ethnopharmacol, 2021. 75 citations.

How we counted

A count is the number of animal research papers whose title or abstract mentions one of the test's search terms. It is not a count of experiments, labs or animals.

A paper that mentions the tail flick only in its methods is missed, so the count runs low. The count includes 6 reviews. For 115 of the 545 papers, PubMed's indexing gave no species, so the species came from PubTator 3 finding one in the title or abstract.

The test's search terms are in the test list download. The full method, with each source and its terms of use, is on our main page, Behavioral tests in published research.

More pain and nociception tests

These pain and nociception tests also have a page, with their papers from 2021 to 2025. Each test with 30 or more papers gets one.

How to cite

APA

ConductScience. (2026, November 10). Tail flick in published research [Data set]. https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/tail-flick

BibTeX

@misc{conductscience_tail_flick_2026,
  author = {{ConductScience}},
  title = {Tail flick in published research},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  url = {https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/tail-flick},
  note = {Data set, released November 10, 2026},
}

Apparatus for the tail flick

Our store sells one product for the tail flick.

Shop the apparatus

Papers that name our apparatus

We keep our own list of published papers whose text names our equipment. Those that mention the tail flick in the title or abstract are already in the counts above.

1 paper from 2023 names our Tail Flick Test. See the papers