Conventional wisdom says that if you shop for groceries on an empty stomach you'll spend more than necessary because of impulse buying fed by hunger pangs, while a full stomach makes you a pickier shopper.
Sea slugs shop the same way.
With a full stomach, however, they actually turn away from and avoid potential food, scientists report in the March 28 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Such avoidance behavior is important for marine snails, because any time spent eating puts them at risk for being prey themselves. The research was designed to study the mechanisms of decision-making, said Rhanor Gillette, a professor of physiology and neuroscience at the University of Illinois. Foraging animals and shopping humans should make decisions that produce the greatest benefit at the least cost. In this case, Gillette's team asked if degrees of appetite affected the readiness of snails to attack or avoid available prey.