Anxious Crayfish

A crustacean appears anxious after a stressful experience, but a drug can fix it, according to a new study.

kerry grens
| 1 min read

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WIKIMEDIA, WEFTZap a crayfish with electricity and the animal appears to experience anxiety: the crustacean will no longer venture out of its comfort zone, scientists reported last week (June 13) in Science. But inject the stressed crayfish with an anti-anxiety drug, and the animal is more willing to explore its environment.

“This work shows the behavior is consistent with a state of anxiety,” Bob Elwood, who studies invertebrate stress at Queen’s University Belfast and who was not involved in the study, told BBC News. “But pinning together what the animals are feeling is the impossible thing. We know how we are feeling, and we know the behavior associated with that—but you cannot ask a crayfish how it feels.”

This is the first demonstration of anxiety-like behavior in invertebrates, and crayfish join a list of other animals, in addition to humans, that display anxiety. The New York Times pointed out that the crayfishes’ response was not fear—the immediate reaction to danger—but more complicated. Daniel Cattaert at the University of Bordeaux, one of the authors of the study, ...

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Meet the Author

  • kerry grens

    Kerry Grens

    Kerry served as The Scientist’s news director until 2021. Before joining The Scientist in 2013, she was a stringer for Reuters Health, the senior health and science reporter at WHYY in Philadelphia, and the health and science reporter at New Hampshire Public Radio. Kerry got her start in journalism as a AAAS Mass Media fellow at KUNC in Colorado. She has a master’s in biological sciences from Stanford University and a biology degree from Loyola University Chicago.

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