What Happens When Other Animals Consume Psychedelics

If you have a curiosity for the weird, you are likely familiar with the strange and cruel experiment that saw an Indian elephant named Tusko dosed with a large quantity of LSD.

In 1962, due to an error in calculating the dose, Tusko was administered a massive 297mg of LSD, sending the animal into convulsions and, ultimately, causing its death. 

The scientists were researching a behaviour specific to male elephants: musth. Musth is a once-yearly period where a male elephant experiences a surge of reproductive hormones, causing elevated aggression and making them very dangerous.

This meant male elephants were hard to control in captivity, and scientists wanted to find a way to stop it. 

As this biological process is unique to elephants, the scientists could not find a suitable test subject, and so they tested on an elephant. 

The problem with the dosing was that the scientists wrongly believed that, as an elephant is bigger than a human, it would need a proportionally bigger dose of LSD to see any effects. 

The scientists were very wrong, and Tusko’s serotonin receptors would have been completely overwhelmed by the amount of LSD administered. 

The fatal experiment at Oklahoma City Zoo caused outrage – fuelling debates around the ethics of animal testing and the importance of gradual dosing, especially with psychedelics.

Rodents and Zebrafish

While today animal testing is becoming less popular, scientific research sometimes still uses animals to investigate the safety and effects of substances and medicines when alternatives, such as “organ-on-a-chip” models, are not suitable. 

When investigating psychedelics in the lab, mice and rats are the animals most often tested on, due to their genetic similarities to humans. 

So, what happens when these animals are under the influence of a psychedelic? 

When a rodent has been dosed with a 5-HT2A agonist – like LSD – researchers look for a behavioural response called the “head twitch response”.

It is thought that the head twitch indicates that the substance is activating these receptors, and is a measurable indicator used to understand whether or not a compound is hallucinatory.

Rodents have also been shown to elicit responses such as acute arousal, sedation, reduced aggression, and the reversal of changes caused by chronic stress, among other effects. 

Zebrafish are also a common test subject in the lab. Sharing both genetic and neurochemical similarities to humans, as well as being relatively easy to genetically manipulate, zebrafish are being utilised as pre-clinical models of hallucinations in humans. 

Research shows that psychoactive substances such as LSD, MDMA, and ketamine do not change locomotive activity in zebrafish, indicating the compounds alter perception rather than movement. Additionally, LSD and MDMA have been found to reduce anxiety responses in zebrafish, similar to humans. 

Some of the compounds have also been found to alter social behaviour in the fish, with these normally sociable animals reducing their shoaling behaviours, which researchers suggest could indicate an altered perception of their environment. 

Octopuses and MDMA

Octopuses are highly intelligent animals and have incredibly unique biological mechanisms. 

So much so that they have been described as the closest thing we currently know to an alien by Dominic Sivitilli, a graduate student in Psychology and Astrobiology at the University of Washington.

Sivitilli is interested in the biological evolution of the mind, and says that the mind of an octopus seems “worlds apart” from the human mind.

He explains that the octopus’s brain has two-thirds of its neurons living in its eight arms, and the rest in its brain. Neurons being distributed in the octopus’s arms in this way means that the arms can control themselves independently, saying that, for the octopus, this is “akin to how we use technology.”

How might then a psychoactive compound affect such a vastly different brain?

In 2018, a team from Johns Hopkins University that was researching how social behaviour evolved in animals decided to use MDMA as a tool to investigate how this impacts behaviour in octopuses.

MDMA was chosen as the compound is known to increase sociability in humans, and octopuses are typically solitary, unsociable animals.

While the brains of octopus are wildly different to ours, the researchers found that the MDMA increased the sociability of the octopus, making them more “cuddly” with each other.

Female octopuses uncharacteristically spent more time with male octopuses and were also more "qualitative" in how they spent that time, touching and feeling the cage of the male octopus. “This is very similar to how humans react to MDMA; they touch each other frequently,” said Gül Dölen, M.D., PhD, assistant professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the lead investigator conducting the experiments.

While the researchers emphasise that the findings were preliminary, the study revealed that humans and octopus share brain systems that control social connection. 

Spiders and Their Intricate Webs

From orb webs, tunnel webs and sheet webs, spiders are capable of creating intricate and beautiful homes from their silk. 

Looking at the house spider, a group of researchers investigated what the impacts of different drugs might be on the structure of the spider’s web.

Typically spinning the classic, flat, orbed web, the study found that when dosed with drugs such as amphetamine, LSD, chlorpromazine, diazepam, and psilocybin, for example, it impacted the size, shape, weight and design of the webs that were spun, as well as the frequency of the building. 

Cannabis created webs with more gaps, and caffeine created jagged, squared shapes. LSD created “more perfect than normal” webs.

This patterned, visual evidence suggests that drugs can affect a spider’s perception of their environment.

Dolphins: Pufferfish and LSD

Many animals in the wild consume substances that get them “high”.

Dolphins are one of these creatures. Fascinatingly, dolphins have been observed seeking out pufferfish. The dolphins gently chew on the pufferfish, causing the pufferfish to release a defensive neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin in small, controlled amounts.

This seems to cause the dolphins to enter a trance or “bliss-like” state.

The dolphins have also been seen “playing” with the pufferfish while doing this, “throwing” them around to each other.

Tetrodotoxin, found in a number of marine animals, has no antidote and is 10,000 times more poisonous than cyanide and can lead to death in humans. 

While no official studies have investigated this behaviour in dolphins, some experts suggest that the dolphins are intentionally using the toxin in a recreational manner. 

While not technically in the wild, neurophysiologist and psychoanalyst John Lilly, who invented the floatation tank to research sensory deprivation and consciousness, established centres to study dolphins, administering LSD to the animals in the 1950s/60s and 1980s.

Lilly wanted to understand more about the consciousness of these highly intelligent animals and how the dolphins communicate, and aimed to try to communicate with them. 

Highly unconventional and unethical, his research found that LSD made dolphins much more communicative, and suggested they could mimic human speech; however, he eventually lost funding for his research. 

Animals on Mushrooms

Psilocybin has strong effects on the human mind, but what about on the minds of animals?

Found across a variety of different mushroom species, psilocybin is theorised to have evolved as a defence against insects. 

In a study, researchers suggest that psilocybin alters insect behaviour, particularly those that are “competitors for woody resources” such as termites. 

However, a recent analysis suggests that psilocybin does not offer “complete protection” against insects feeding on the mushrooms, suggesting this hypothesis may need to be “reconsidered”. 

There have been reports of other animals in the wild that seem to seek out these psychedelic mushrooms.

Deers are reported to eat the fairytale-like toadstool, the fly agaric (Amanita muscaria). It has been discovered that the complex nature of the reindeers' digestive system – having four stomachs – removes toxins from mushrooms, with the effects of the fly agaric causing the deer to behave with “violent excitement” and then fall into a deep sleep. 

Further animals that are reported to seek out psychedelic mushrooms are the likes of monkeys, dogs, goats and horses, with reports suggesting it affects their behaviour and can cause vomiting. 

Small and Big Cats on Drugs

Both wild and domesticated small cats are often observed eating or rubbing up against the common catnip plant, or it can be bought in shops in its dried form, often stuffed into cat toys.

This mint-related herb causes cats to increase their playful behaviour, “chase imaginary mice”, can cause drooling, and can cause them to fall asleep.

The jaguar – one of the largest wild cats – has been observed eating yage, a main ingredient in ayahuasca.  

Reports say that the vine causes “playful, kittenish behaviour” in the cat. 

While many of these cases of animals taking substances that might cause an altered state of consciousness are anecdotal reports and not scientific evidence, it raises the question if humans are not the only animals choosing to experiment with their minds. 

Stephanie is one of our community bloggers here at Chemical Collective. If you’re interested in joining our blogging team and getting paid to write about subjects you’re passionate about, please reach out to Sam via email at [email protected]