Animeleague

Citizen wrote:In the time of chimpanzees I was a lobster.

WorldIsMine wrote:soy un perdedor

While many more experiments of these types are required, the main conclusion that we can offer is that 5HT is not important in determining whether animals will fight, or even if they will win fights, but only for how long they are willing to fight. Moreover, as in the developmental studies, where elevated or lowered levels of 5HT caused developmental abnormalities, too much or too little 5HT both seem to cause an increased willingness of animals to fight. It remains to be established whether this translates as 5HT serving mainly a "motivational" role in fighting behavior in lobsters.

Injections of Prozac alone into subordinate animals have no effect on fighting behavior. It is interesting that acute treatment with Prozac in patients also is not effective in the treatment of depression (for review see Stokes 1993). It takes several weeks for a fully therapeutic effect to be seen, suggesting that the ability of Prozac to block 5HT uptake is only part of the explanation for its effectiveness. We carried out chronic treatments of crayfish and lobsters with Prozac using osmotic mini-pumps glued to the backs of animals that continuously infused the drug into the cardiac sinus. Prozac was injected over a 2-week period in this way and then animals were paired against larger and smaller opponents to search for drug effects. The effects seen were not dramatic, but animals that had received chronic Prozac treatment fought for longer periods of time than saline-infused control groups (A. Delago,unpublished observations).