Surprise! Coked-Up Bees Get Buzzed, Too

Drugged-up bees get overexcited and dance like crazy

By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff

Posted Jan 6, 2009 11:08 AM CST

(Newser) – Coked-up bees get as buzzed as their human counterparts, the New York Times reports. Researchers probing the nature of addiction discovered that when bees were given a dose of cocaine their judgment was altered and they became much more enthusiastic about food finds, performing the waggle dance more often, faster, and for longer.

When the bees were forced to quit coke cold turkey, they scored lower on performance tests than their undrugged colleagues. The bees proved to be a highly effective way of studying the effects of drugs on the brain and the findings could someday help tackle drug addiction in humans, say the researchers—whose work is published in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

[Images (3)]

[Quotes (1)]

A bee collects nectar from a flower in Sunflower Village, 22 miles west of Amman, Jordan. (AP Photo/Mohammad abu Ghosh)

A carpenter bee collects pollen from a flower in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Al Behrman)

A hive of honey bees at Busy Bees Apiaries in Chapel Hill, NC. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

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What we have in the bee is a wonderfully simple system to see how brains react to a drug of abuse.
- Andrew B. Barron, a senior lecturer at Macquarie University in Australia and a co-leader in the bees-on-cocaine studies

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Surprise! Coked-Up Bees Get Buzzed, Too