Getting Crayfish Drunk... For Science!
What can drunk crayfish tell us about how being social can affect our physiology? *Our apologies to Dr. Jens Herberholz, who spells Herberholz the best and only way to spell Herberholz! (Special...
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A trio of scientists at the University of Maryland have spent a lot of time spiking the water in tanks of crayfish with booze... for science! The experiment sounds kind of ridiculous, but drunk crayfish actually act a lot like inebriated humans – and could help us figure out the mystery of how alcohol affects the nervous system. In this particular study, researchers were looking at how being social seems to affect drunkenness. And this week, they reported in the Journal of Experimental Biology that it’s harder to get a crayfish drunk if it’s kept in a tank alone. If you add some ethanol to their tanks, crayfish start acting noticeably drunk. What does that look like? Well, if they’re a little bit intoxicated, they stand up in an aggressive-loo...
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A trio of scientists at the University of Maryland have spent a lot of time spiking the water in tanks of crayfish with booze... for science! The experiment sounds kind of ridiculous, but drunk crayfish actually act a lot like inebriated humans – and could help us figure out the mystery of how alcohol affects the nervous system. In this particular study, researchers were looking at how being social seems to affect drunkenness. And this week, they reported in the Journal of Experimental Biology that it’s harder to get a crayfish drunk if it’s kept in a tank alone. If you add some ethanol to their tanks, crayfish start acting noticeably drunk. What does that look like? Well, if they’re a little bit intoxicated, they stand up in an aggressive-loo...
