Slashdot Mirror
Depressed Hamsters Help Researchers
Ant wrote to mention an ABC News article indicating that hampsters feel the same effects during the winter months as humans do. Known as Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.), winter-related depression affects up to 20 percent of Americans. From the article: "For example, if the animals spend more time hovering near the walls of their containers, rather than at the center, it's believed they feel more anxious. If they decline to slurp up tempting offers of sugar water, scientists take it as a sign of depression. Another test involves placing the animals in water and seeing if they swim or simply give up and float. Hamsters don't sink apparently, but float in water. 'The sooner they give up in the water, the more depressed they are,' Pyter said. 'If you give them an antidepressant they don't give up as quickly.'"
If they decline to slurp up tempting offers of sugar water, scientists take it as a sign of depression.
The depression diet plan? Someone could make a fortune out of the book rights.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
Hamsters don't sink apparently, but float in water.
These are some exciting results!
You learn something new every day. With results like these, how far away can self-replicating autonomous nanobots be?
Karma: Chameleon (comes and goes)
Exercise? Eat well? Get away? This article has no purpose to insult us geeks. But I did leave the best for last:
WTF is a hampster?
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
Thats all well and good but did anyone stop to ask the hamster's how _they_ felt about it?
"WTF is a hampster?"
You throw a dirty hamster into one of those.
"Another test involves placing the animals in water and seeing if they swim or simply give up and float. Hamsters don't sink apparently, but float in water."
That's not the test to see if a hamster is depressed, it's the test to see if the hamster is a witch.
Yeah really. I mean their hamsters, right? Completely different biology involved. Now I have to get back to my windowless cubicle and finish that soda that's getting warm on my desk. Good thing there's nobody around on the weekends. I feel so alone...
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
People today aren't any happier. Gayer, maybe
Talk about going to the place where the light never shine
A depressed hamster is suffering from a condition known as SAD? Shoot him full of speed and throw him in the river and he makes like a furry outboard engine?
I nominate thhe discoverers of these critical scientific facts for an award.....
Well, that's obvious - if the hamster's feet aren't touching the floor it will drift helplessly around its cage, bouncing off the walls and ceiling, propelled by any random passing breeze. That would make any sentient being anxious...
"Hamster psychiatry is a pseudoscience," Tom Criuse told host Matt Lauer, later saying: "You don't know the history of rodent psychiatry. I do."
:-P
Sorry, couldn't help it. I haven't taken my vitamins today.
Adolfo
I, for one, welcome our new depressed overlords.
Americans (meaning USians) don't even live that far north (with the exception of Alaskians).
Up here at the 59th parallel (Stockholm) we're used to darkness!
Now I got depressed.
Ah yes, but many of those are so-called "sleeper" hamsters, genetically modified to live for decades (many have been around since the beginning of the Cold War.) Upon a posthypnotic command from their long forgotten Soviet masters, they are designed to turn into organic micronukes and volatilize a few city blocks in a sudden glare of actinic light. Fortunately, after the fall of the Empire no-one seems to know what that command is, but still ... you should be careful what you say to them.
... you don't live anywhere near Chicago, do you? Heh heh.
You, ah
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
There's plenty of P in hampster cages.
Why do you think the P is in there?
And I learned in school that "learnt" isn't a word.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Whether or not this is true, I know I'd pay good money for an mpg of that. (how much Xanax does it require to get a hamster to hover?)
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
You put me in a bucket of water. Oh, that's nice. You could have at least made it warm water, but no. Oh, what's the point? I suppose I'll just lay here and drown. Hope that will make you feel good, drowning a poor hamster. Even if you pull me out of the bucket all I have to look forward to is running in a stupid wheel. I run and run and run but never get anywhere. And all I ever get to eat are pellets and water. Boy, there's a five star menu. It's all so pointless....
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The only problem with all these studies with species that can't communicate is that there's more than one explanation for observed behaviour.
In other news, hamsters can only tolerate 12 hours of constant fluorescent light before being driven insane by it. One hamster, who had been exposed to 16 hours per day for 60 days, was quoted as saying "I knew once I stopped struggling in that water, they'd put me in the box, man! And you don't ever want to go back to that box!"
Unidentified sources within the 16-hour per day hamster camp have stated that it's gotten so bad, even the reflection of the light from the plexiglass walls is antagonizing. It's driven the hamsters from their normal comfort zone into the wide-open middle of the box, where predators, if they existed, would be able to attack and where the only hope of escape is to run faster than the hamster next to you; as such, the hamsters have been gorging on sugar-water for quick-burning fuel.
Someone call Letterman.
I am picturing a hamster running on its little exercise wheel just stopping and thinking to itself "Oh what's the use? It seems like I run and I run and I run but I never seem to get anywhere."
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.