Burt's Blog

Hello everyone, Tyrone here to give you an update on our exciting science comic! One of the scientists named Rose worked really hard to ink all 20 pages of the comic recently. Now that it’s done, they’ve been able learn some interesting things from students who have read it I wanted to share it with you all! Just a quick reminder from a previous blog, scientists gave a pre- and post- questionnaire to students chosen to read certain materials to see whether or not there’s a difference in their attitudes towards science and how much they learn from a comic book versus more traditional formats. Students were randomly selected to read either: 1) a scientific journal article, 2) a ‘news-type’ summary of that article, 3) the comic book, or 4) nothing (the control group). The comic (of course starring myself, Burt, Toni, and Gilgamesh), journal article, and ‘news-type’ summary all told the story of how social defeat in us males has impacts on our behavior and brain, similar to what the scient...

Hello, Tyrone here! You know what’s not fun? – Being bullied and harassed over long periods of time. I’ve been picked on by dominant males before, especially Burt, and because of it I wanted to better understand the effects of this constant bullying on the behavior, brain, and overall health of a fish like me. Luckily, the scientists are interested in this too! They study the effects of repeated bullying using something called a resident-intruder paradigm. Males of our species are either dominant (like Burt) or subordinate (like me, Tyrone). Dominant males are brightly colored and aggressively defend their territory from rival males like me. In a resident-intruder paradigm, there is a tank divided into two territories by a solid barrier. One side contains an intruder male, and the other side contains a resident dominant male who is slightly larger than the intruder. If you place the intruder male into the resident male’s territory, he will be socially defeated by that resident. What do...