When drunk fish are not afraid

With the help of robotic fish, scientists realized that zebrafish have some behaviors that are similar to those of drinkers. Accordingly, when they are drunk they are no longer afraid.

In fact, using the concept of 'drunk' may not be technically accurate, but in fact, when exposed to beer, wine, zebrafish fish no longer fear its competitors - a version of fish robot Indian leaves. While 'awake' they are worried, avoiding this robot.

Robot fish.Photo: futurity.org

Experiments were conducted to understand the effects of alcohol on fear reactions , conducted by scientists at New York University Polytechnic University (NYU-Poly) and the Istituto Superiore di Sanità School ( Italy). In the laboratory there is a fish tank with 3 compartments, the group of zebrafish are placed in the middle compartment. When their opponent robot fish is released, zebrafish seems frightened and tries to swim into the empty compartments. Then the researchers gave a moderate amount of ethanol to not harm the fish into the compartment. A few minutes later, the zebrafish no longer feared the robot fish, did not run away. This is quite similar to human behavior, some rodents and some other fish species when it comes to ethanol.

Previous studies have shown that if using zebra robot fish, real zebrafish behaves friendly to them, but when ethanol is added, they start to neglect the robot fish. This behavior is also recorded with sticklebacks.

Scientists are quite satisfied with the research results. Gizmag magazine quoted Professor Maurizo Porfiri (NYU-Poly) as saying that these evidence can represent a new, interesting approach in assessing and understanding organism's emotional and behavioral responses. This research paper has just been published in PloS ONE magazine.