Drunk Zebrafish Doubles Its Swim-Speed Limit
- Richard Farrell for http://news.discovery.com May 16th, 2014
- Source: http://news.discovery.com/animals/drunk-zebrafish-140516.htm#mkcpgn=rssnws1
A zebrafish hopped up on ethanol got some firsthand experience with the expression "drink like a fish" when it was the star of an alcohol and sociality study out of New York University.
Researchers wanted to study how the presence of non-drinking zebrafish would impact the social behavior of one drunkard among them, a fish who was given four treatments of ethanol in varying doses, from none at all to, well, a lot. The zebrafish would soon find out what it's like to be the the singular disorderly drunk found at every party ever thrown.
The NYU team first found some unexpected effects related to locomotion in the fish ("don't drink and swim" may be a worthy admonition for a human, but for a fish maybe a bit unnecessary).
