Could this not have been simply an instinct to find cleaner waters? I'm surprised they didn't add another control group which injected something unpleasant that could be naturally found in an area, but would be undesirable - ammonia, some sort of acid, or something along those lines.
anthonj 3 hours ago [-]
The title ie a bit misleading:
The study want to prove that cocaine is yet another polluter thar alters the fish behaviour even in the small quantities that can be found in the wild in polluted areas. Not that something is special or different about cocaine pollution.
So the control group in this case are fishes with an implant with no drug at all.
Because even in low concentrations, I expect cocaine to have a different effect than Valium. (And in both case I expect a different effect at high concentrations.)
kees99 2 hours ago [-]
Agree with your point overall, but ammonia in particular is a poor example.
Fish lack urea cycle, so they produce and excrete significant amounts of ammonia as part of normal metabolism.
throwa356262 3 hours ago [-]
And just like that, smoked Salmon became popular again :)
BTW, did you knew municipalities can easily measure fluctuations in drug usage by testing the sewage water? In fact, sometimes they can see clear differences between different parts of the city.
hmokiguess 2 hours ago [-]
Is data like that sold anywhere? I wonder if there’s an analytics market for profiling neighborhoods based on sewage water content now. If my browser history wasn’t already rock bottom, that’s a new low for the ad market
Fun fact: if you sign up for many online casinos or betting sites they will indeed use Google Streetview to lookup your house to estimate how much money they might extract from you.
hmokiguess 17 minutes ago [-]
that's wild, do you have a source? curious to know more
mschuster91 1 hours ago [-]
> BTW, did you knew municipalities can easily measure fluctuations in drug usage by testing the sewage water?
Yep. Not just drugs are monitored this way, but also the spread of infectious diseases. That can lead to sometimes pretty weird findings - for example, polio virus is supposed to be extinct, but every so often it shows up in sewage monitoring of major German cities [1]. The cause most likely are people (tourists and immigrants) from Africa and Asia that got an attenuated virus-based vaccination in their home country shortly before they came here.
Covid is, at least in Bavaria, also part of the regular monitoring schedule [2], Austria monitors for Covid, RSV and influenza [3].
I learned recently about “Vin Mariani” a wine from the 1860s that was fortified with coca leaves and contained 6mg per liquid ounce of the wine; except for the bottles sold in USA where it was 7.2mg per ounce, because there were other patent medicines that had cocaine in them and the manufacturer added a bit more to be competitive in the market.
The Pope of the time loved the stuff and awarded the company a Vatican medal for it.
sekh60 54 minutes ago [-]
While I love the Internet and all sorts of modern life fixtures (in a developed country), I feel a bit like I missed out by not being alive when all the crazy drinks were around.
chuckadams 1 minutes ago [-]
Probably best to have missed out on radium water.
colechristensen 19 minutes ago [-]
And John Pemberton produced a clone of Vin Mariani but when alcohol prohibition was passed in Atlanta he produced a non-acoholic version... coca-cola.
j_french 53 minutes ago [-]
never knew this was a thing. seems it's still available to buy! sounds like a more respectable version of Buckfast, the tonic wine made in an abbey in Devon that had/has a cult popularity with the youth of parts of Ireland and Scotland
pixelpoet 3 hours ago [-]
Shine on you crazy salmon
api 2 hours ago [-]
Cocaine bear, cocaine shark, cocaine… salmon?
windowliker 46 minutes ago [-]
Next up: smackhead whales, dolphins on crack, and manatees hitting the bong.
zhouzhao 5 hours ago [-]
If that is not one good argument to start producing cocaine locally, then I don't know!
Save the fish.
HPsquared 5 hours ago [-]
Roaming more widely may not be healthy for the salmon.
parodysbird 4 hours ago [-]
Whether it is or is not, is not a function of the cocaine though, but rather idiosyncrasies of the wider ecologies the salmon are in.
If roaming more widely introduces them to more productive food opportunities (or, lower predation) than their closer ecology, then it would be beneficial for them. If it does not, then it wouldn't be. Neither context is determined in the basic finding that cocaine causes them to roam more widely.
grebc 3 hours ago [-]
They’re in a better mood though.
finghin 5 hours ago [-]
I think another study is in order examining how cocaine affects breeding habits.
kvgr 2 hours ago [-]
What about the rats and turtles in sewers? They might become more agresive!
lynx97 2 hours ago [-]
There is trash 80s "horror" movie waiting to be made.
zhouzhao 2 hours ago [-]
Gotta give them something to improve their perception of their living conditions!
throwpoaster 2 hours ago [-]
We’re looking at you, Vancouver.
Rendered at 12:29:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
The study want to prove that cocaine is yet another polluter thar alters the fish behaviour even in the small quantities that can be found in the wild in polluted areas. Not that something is special or different about cocaine pollution.
So the control group in this case are fishes with an implant with no drug at all.
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(26)...
I expect the fish to be more active. A coffee patch would be a nice 4th group as another control.
[1] Chewing the leaves of coke is common in many countries of South America, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acullico
~ Hacker News Guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Fish lack urea cycle, so they produce and excrete significant amounts of ammonia as part of normal metabolism.
BTW, did you knew municipalities can easily measure fluctuations in drug usage by testing the sewage water? In fact, sometimes they can see clear differences between different parts of the city.
https://wastewater-observatory.jrc.ec.europa.eu/#/content/th...
Also, Wastewater analysis and drugs — a European multi-city study:
https://www.euda.europa.eu/publications/pods/waste-water-ana...
Yep. Not just drugs are monitored this way, but also the spread of infectious diseases. That can lead to sometimes pretty weird findings - for example, polio virus is supposed to be extinct, but every so often it shows up in sewage monitoring of major German cities [1]. The cause most likely are people (tourists and immigrants) from Africa and Asia that got an attenuated virus-based vaccination in their home country shortly before they came here.
Covid is, at least in Bavaria, also part of the regular monitoring schedule [2], Austria monitors for Covid, RSV and influenza [3].
[1] https://www.aerzteblatt.de/news/erreger-der-kinderlaehmung-i...
[2] https://bay-voc.lgl.bayern.de/abwassermonitoring
[3] https://abwasser.ages.at/de/
The Pope of the time loved the stuff and awarded the company a Vatican medal for it.
Save the fish.
If roaming more widely introduces them to more productive food opportunities (or, lower predation) than their closer ecology, then it would be beneficial for them. If it does not, then it wouldn't be. Neither context is determined in the basic finding that cocaine causes them to roam more widely.