"Happily, the stress-induced changes in behavior and brain appear to be reversible. To rattle the rats to the point where their stress response remained demonstrably hyperactive, the researchers exposed the animals to four weeks of varying stressors: moderate electric shocks, being encaged with dominant rats, prolonged dunks in water. Those chronically stressed animals were then compared with nonstressed peers. The stressed rats had no trouble learning a task like pressing a bar to get a food pellet or a squirt of sugar water, but they had difficulty deciding when to stop pressing the bar, as normal rats easily did.
But with only four weeks’ vacation in a supportive setting free of bullies and Tasers, the formerly stressed rats looked just like the controls, able to innovate, discriminate and lay off the bar."
Did you catch that? Waterboard rats and they get really stressed out and their brains change, but if you give them vacations free of TASERS and BULLIES their brains start to recover. This seems relevant to me, and also diffuses some of the rage I experienced Saturday at 4 am drunk reading the jibberish trend piece about the supposed rising fashionability of potbellies.
Anyway I guess I'm going to call this "animals don't have jobs?" So some of them get stressed out.
Or hit the streets. This guy's doing ok, he'll definitely make it to Hartford
Or vacation
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