Hampsters on a Plane
Diego Golombek and colleagues from the Quilmes National University in Buenos
Aires took a bunch of hamsters and disrupted their normal cycle of 14 hours'
daylight followed by 10 hours' night. They injected some of the subjects with 70
micrograms of Viagra, then shortly after switched off the cage lights early to
simulate the effects of travelling between Paris and New York - a six-hour time
shift - continuing this body-clock bashing for several weeks.As a result, the hamsters became "disoriented" and, when the lights went out, eschewed their favoured nocturnal activity of hitting the running wheel. It took the control group 12 days to get back to their normal selves, "at which point they showed normal running activity soon after the lights went out", while the
Viagra-boosted guinea pigs were up and running in eight days.