Gerbils also get the winter blues

[The Straight Story]

Gerbils also get the winter blues

December 21 -- the date of the winter solstice -- marks the shortest day of the year. Many people may find themselves wanting to spend more time on the couch and less time with friends -- one of the effects of seasonal affective disorder.

Zoologist Noga Kronfeld-Schor of Tel Aviv University in Israel thinks that studying mood disorders in animals -- specifically, wild gerbils -- may yield new clues about the way seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, works.

Kronfeld-Schor and her colleagues took a group of fat sand rats -- actually a type of gerbil -- from the a research zoo in Tel Aviv and kept them in a room where they received only about five hours a day of light for three weeks, instead of the usual 12. The gerbils began to respond to the effects of less light.

"No, the rats don't lie down on the couch," said Haim Einat of the University of Minnesota Duluth, who also worked on the study. "But there are some behavioral aspects to depression."

The gerbils behaved strangely: they mated less, turned down tempting sugar water (usually ambrosia for rodents), acted more submissively and explored their surroundings less often. The scientists also noticed that the animals gave up more quickly trying to swim out of a cylinder partially filled with water and no way to escape.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-gerbils-winter-blues.html