Sign me up! PZ Myers Harderkid13, blogging at Pharyngula is conducting an experiment. He’s turning fish into alcoholics:
Over the past few days I have been running my trials for experiment that was oh so controversial last time I blogged about it. I have been placing two groups of six fish into two solutions containing 0.5% ethanol and 0.25% ethanol. […]
I am hoping to observe the development of alcoholic tolerance over the course of this experiment. Other studies that I have found doing this sort of thing exposed the fish to alcohol 24/7.
I’m not sure what the experiment hopes to accomplish, but I can certainly relate to the fish.
Update: It wasn’t PZ Myers, but rather, a guest blogger. Fixed.
Snarkilicious
It’s not PZ, it’s a guest-blogger on his site.
But I remember (from mumble-mumble years ago) high-school colleagues doing something similar, but a bit lower-tech.
Alcohol + guppies, and observe the mating behavior. Allow me to summarize the results:
some alcohol: mating
more alcohol: more mating
still more alcohol: dazed and confused fish, less mating
even more alcohol: “floaters”
A high-school kid can learn a lot from research like this!
Sensitive Pony Tailed Girly Man
I thought it was pretty obvious what he’s going for. Exactly how much alcohol will it take before a fish pins a flag to his/her dorsal fin and starts attacking any fish not wearing one. Inquiring minds do want to know, I just hope we get conclusive results before PETA gets wind of it.
Mark
The phrase “drinks like a fish” comes to mind.
skip
Hmm, they do always say the White House is something of a goldfish bowl.
Jon H
“It’s not PZ, it’s a guest-blogger on his site.”
I believe it’s one of his students.
Grumpy Code Monkey
I can see what he’s going for. Previous experiments measured development of alcohol tolerance, but never gave the fish a chance to detox. What this guy is doing is adding the detox cycle and seeing whether that makes a difference (does it take longer to develop a particular level of tolerance, do the fish ever reach the same level of tolerance, etc.).
Andrew
Fish, plus infinity!
Helena Montana
I hate to sound all PETA-ish, but torturing fish that way is evil. Another power-mad Republican at work, obviously.
Epicanis
The advantage of using fish for this kind of thing is that you can precisely control the blood-alcohol level of the fish without any special monitoring – whatever the alcohol level of the water is, that will be the blood alcohol level.
See also the (sadly out of print) book “Drunken Goldfish and Other Irrelevant Research“…