WE KNOW that depression caused by being bottom of the social pile can lead to coronary heart disease and premature death. Now we may know why, thanks to the first ever study of depression in female monkeys, which appear to suffer in the same way as humans when subjected to the strain of being the lowest of the low.
Previous work on primates looked at how sudden stresses, such as being snatched from their mother, causes depression in baby monkeys. But Carol Shively and her team at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, wanted to find…
