Brown trout. Image: Jay Fle
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After their roughly two-month stint in the tanks, the researchers transferred trout from each tank into a shared freshwater environment. The dosed fish were less likely to move around the new tank compared to the control fish, suggesting that they may have been experiencing stress, anxiety, and other symptoms related to withdrawal from the drug. These behavioral changes lasted about 96 hours as the drug concentrations subsided in the exposed populations, a gradual decrease that was confirmed by later biochemical studies of their brains.Horký and his colleagues also created a “choice arena” in the new tank that contained water with similar meth concentrations to the previous dosed tank. The exposed trout were more likely to seek out this area compared to the control group, no matter where it was placed in the environment, which was “considered an indicator of addiction,” according to the study.“Personally, I was mostly surprised by the fact that methamphetamine users can unknowingly cause fish meth addiction in the ecosystems around us”
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