Prozac in the water supply potentially erases fish s personalities (Image: Getty)
READ MORE Psychoactive drugs target receptors of the human brain that are evolutionarily conserved throughout the animal kingdom; so it is perhaps not surprising that they can affect non-target species.
Although the specific limits are of this unintended drug delivery remains unknown, scientists suspect fish in the wild could have virtually all aspects of their behaviour radically altered by bioactive contaminants.
This may very possibly include activity, sociality, feeding, migration and mating.
An important unknown is how drugs such as Prozac may alter marine animals at the individual level, as studies have until now focussed solely on averaged effects in fish groups.