Thursday, August 26, 2010

Alcoholic Monkeys!

Today in Primate Medicine we learned about lots and lots and lots of different kinds of monkeys.

However, my favorite was the African Green Monkeys. They have a very strong dominance hierarchies, which has been interesting in studies using them to study alcoholism. The monkeys really enjoy screwdrivers (orange juice and vodka). The alpha ones, however, don't drink much because they're too busy protecting their social status. The ones in the middle of the social structure drink socially for fun. The ones at the bottom of the social ladder become alcoholics.

That would be a really interesting study to have participated in! Though, perhaps not to clean up after. Drunk people are annoying enough; I can't imagine drunk monkies.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Back to School!

I am having my (probably? maybe?) last first week of school ever!

I haven't had the first lecture of all my classes yet, but so far things are going really well! However, I am a little nervous about the fact that my schedule changes significantly every 4 weeks! That's kind of scary. I'm pretty sure that a lot of us are going to show up in the wrong places at least a couple times.