Animals and Psychedelics

by Giorgio Samorini

  If we shift our attention to tribal populations, we find completely different definitions and concepts of what composes a drug. For example, according to various tribes native to Amazonia, drugs are those substances given to them by Westerners, such as alcohol and cigarettes. Meanwhile, the shamans of these tribes do not conceive of being addicted to the drugs they use traditionally—first among them being the local tobacco, called mapacho, which they smoke continually. For them this tobacco, along with a hallucinogenic drink called ayahuasca, are included in the category of medicines and nourishment of the soul.

  From all this we can deduce that the definition of what constitutes a drug is dependent on its encompassing culture. Even the effects of drugs are influenced by the cultural environment in which they are experienced. For this reason it is extremely difficult to formulate a scientific and general definition of the concepts drug and drugged. It is also probable that some of these difficulties are reinforced by excessive generalization regarding the drug phenomenon; that is to say, many behavioral phenomena are forced together under this umbrella concept, when in reality they are sharply distinct from it. What a long road we have yet to walk before reaching an objective and scientific analysis of the drug phenomenon!

  Shifting our attention yet again to observe the animal world, the situation becomes, understandably, even more complicated, given that animals cannot communicate their sensation of feeling drugged to us, and we must therefore deduce their condition through observation of their outward behavior or, at best, by physiological and neuropharmacological data. Considering that our concept of what it means to be drugged is culturally biased, observation of drugged animals runs the serious risk of being nonobjective. Scientific research—not excluding ethology—generally follows the principle of “finding what you’re looking for,” and both research and researchers are conditioned by a cultural and moral environment that dictates a priori that in human behavior, the use of drugs is an aberrant phenomenon completely lacking in constructive value. We should not be surprised, therefore, if the study of such behavior among animals is still in its first stages. In the nonpermissive cultural matrix that surrounds us, it is difficult to affirm and accept that the “filthy” habit of drugging oneself could corrupt the “purity” of animal nature. For an ethologist to make such a statement is tantamount to sending his professional career up in smoke.

  A second class of problems regards the intention of the animal in the act of drugging itself. We must, from the start, distinguish the behavior of animals that drug themselves because they are influenced or directly induced by human beings to do so from the behavior of animals in the wild that choose to drug themselves without any apparent human influence.

  In the opium dens of the Orient, domestic cats become addicted to the opium smoke permeating the rooms, and it is common to see these cats approach the smokers, waiting for them to expel mouthfuls of smoke, which the animals then inhale repeatedly. That these creatures are addicted to opium is proved by the fact that normal cats turn away in disgust to avoid the exhaled smoke, as well as the fact that when the opium-den cats are deprived of their daily fumes, they are seized by obvious symptoms of withdrawal, which in some cases result in their death. Even the mice that live in and around the dens approach the smokers—who are generally undisturbed by the intrusion—and stand up on their hind legs in an attempt to inhale the opium.

  In Africa, monkeys who live in captivity and in direct contact with cigarette smokers swiftly take up the habit of smoking themselves and become infuriated if they are denied their daily cigarettes. I witnessed this myself during the course of my field studies in Gabon. In such cases we are clearly not dealing with a natural animal impulse but with an intentional behavior conditioned by the human environment in which these animals live.

  Nor can we consider it a natural impulse in those cases in which human beings themselves are the ones to administer by force certain drugs to laboratory animals for the purposes of research. Journals specializing in psychopharmacological and neurochemical research are filled with the results of experiments carried out on the most disparate animals, who undergo forced administration of cocaine, heroin, nicotine, and countless other drugs so that scientists can study their physical and behavioral effects. In certain cases the animals in question are trained to self-administer the drugs, for the purpose of researching the mechanisms and parameters of addiction, tolerance, and crises of withdrawal, as well as the subjects’ instincts, emotions, and social relationships under the effect of whatever drug is being studied. Such cases are not relevant to our interests here, either, in that they constitute intentionally forced behavior dictated by human will.

  This particular research, then, focuses solely on those cases in which animals evidence a natural intentional behavior in their consumption of drugs, far removed from any human influence.

  Having verified the absolute impossibility of human influence, we must next distinguish between accidental and intentional ingestion, a distinction not always immediately evident. Ethologists frequently tend to interpret cases of animals that become intoxicated by consuming psychoactive plants as accidental. But our knowledge of incontestable cases in which ingestion was not accidental should give rise to doubt as to whether, hidden behind the theory of chance mishap usually attributed by broader surveys to the relationship between animals and psychoactive drugs, there might not simply lie our ignorance of both intimate and generalized behaviors in the animal world.

  The interpretation of accidental ingestion is justified to a certain extent in that the behavior of animals that drug themselves brings with it, in many cases, a certain risk in apparent contradiction to the instinct for self-preservation. Moths that grow drunk on the nectar of the datura flower fall to the ground in a daze and remain there for some time, running the risk of being swallowed by predators; Canadian caribou, after intoxicating themselves by eating fly-agaric mushrooms, wander away from their calves, which then become frequent victims of wolves; American robins that gobble down certain kinds of berries and get drunk fall to the ground and are often run over by cars or eaten by cats. Although such dire costs contradict the individual instinct of self-preservation, it does not follow that they are contradictory if we observe the phenomenon in terms of the species.

  One criterion for distinguishing between accidental and intentional behaviors is whether or not such behaviors are engaged in repeatedly. If we observe a goat eat the inebriant beans of the mescal plant and afterward tremble, fall down, and rise up again later, we might well consider the goat to have undergone an accidental intoxication by a psychoactive drug. But when we observe the same goat return time and again to eat those same beans, manifesting identical symptoms of inebriation each and every time, it must make us suspect an intentional behavior of which the outward symptoms—trembling, falling to the earth, and getting back up in a while—are only some of the effects, probably the least important ones, of the drunkenness that goat is experiencing, to which it is attracted in some way and in which it is probably taking a certain pleasure. Shaking followed by lying down and then standing up again after a certain period of time is something that happens to many human beings who have consumed drugs of various types; yet we cannot, for this reason, affirm that the most significant effect of those drugs is that of shaking, falling down, and getting up again.

  What types of drugs do animals use? The little we know at this point indicates that they are essentially vegetable in nature: seeds, the nectar of flowers, leaves, roots, fermented fruits, lichens, mushrooms, and so forth. In other words, plants. In most cases the drugs contained in plants that exert an intoxicating effect on human beings do the same for animals, but among the drugs used intentionally by animals, not all are used as drugs by people. Either their effect on humans is simply not known, or they have proven to be toxic to us. The mind-altering properties of many drugs found in plants—coffee, tea, khat, iboga, and fly agaric, for instance—were discovered by human observers who initially witnessed
their intentional use by animals.

  That drugs affecting human beings also affect animals has been proved by countless experiments in which these same drugs were administered to the most disparate animal species. Even the so-called inferior animals undergo similar effects. Still famous are the experiments carried out on spiders to whom appropriate doses of different drugs were orally administered. Every once in a while a meal of flies containing these drugs was fed to spiders of the genus Zilla x notata, which were then observed building their webs while in a mind-altered state. Under the influence of LSD the webs were characteristically arabesque, while caffeine-affected webs appeared angular, with sharp corners and large empty spaces that rendered them useless; under the influence of hashish, the webs were functional, but they were only partially filled in. (Stafford 1979).

  In another experiment, different doses of LSD were administered orally to some hornets (Vespa orientalis). About ten minutes after the ingestion of this powerful hallucinogen, the insects manifested a slowing down of their movements, then the cessation of all activity, stereotypical motions, and states of apparent lethargy (Floru, Ishay, and Gitter 1969). These behavioral changes, while revealing nothing to us of the inner sensations experienced by the hornets, demonstrate that LSD does, incontrovertibly, affect the hymenopterans in question.

  Other experiments still famous today are those that John Lilly undertook with dolphins into whom he injected LSD. It is well known that these cetaceans are highly intelligent and graced with a complex system of communication made up of whistles and vocalizations.

  “If we put a second dolphin in with the first, who has been injected with LSD, the index of vocalization rises for a period of three hours; in other words, a real and true communicative exchange takes place. The other [noninjected] dolphin responds to the first, and his index of vocalization augments as well. If a person enters the tank while [the dolphin is under] the effect of LSD, the vocalization index rises and remains high. Without LSD it rises for only a brief period of time.”

  That LSD evokes a socializing effect on dolphins was also demonstrated by an experiment conducted with a male dolphin who had rebuffed all contact with human beings for two and a half years after having been accidentally struck in the tail by an underwater speargun. Under the influence of LSD, the dolphin approached Lilly and his collaborators for the first time and remained near them for the entire period of affect by the hallucinogen (Lilly 1981, 240).

  Even among animals whose diet is exclusively carnivorous, we know of cases in which they have sought out and ingested vegetable material, sometimes—but not always—for the purpose of self-intoxication. There are some known cases of animals that use plants as medicines, and such behavior is probably much more widespread than we know of as yet.

  Cats are wont to chew the young leaves and blades of certain grasses as emetics to purge their digestive systems. Chimpanzees of the species Pan troglodytes, who live in Tanzania, use the leaves of a species of Aspilia, belonging to the Asteraceae family, for medicinal purposes. These leaves contain thiarubrine-A, a powerful antibacterial and antifungal agent, and are traditionally used for medicinal reasons by the human populations of Tanzania (Rodriguez et al. 1985). The chimpanzees gather these leaves “usually first thing in the morning. The leaves are not chewed but held in the mouth and massaged against the gums with the tongue. It has been hypothesized that this technique evolved among the chimps to augment absorption of the active principle administered by mouth, since the moment it enters the acid environment of the stomach it becomes deactivated. We use similar methods for the consumption of pharmaceuticals sensitive to gastric juices. . . . We have even witnessed an anorexic and obviously sick chimpanzee lick the bitter juices from the pith of a particular tree (Vernonia amygdalina). Presumably the afflicted animal had actively sought out the plant, despite its unpleasant taste, precisely for its medicinal virtues (McGowan 1999, 331; Newton and Nishida 1991).”

  Baboons of the genus Papio eat the fruit of Balanites aegyptica, probably not as food but for its curative properties, given that it contains elevated quantities of dioxin, a steroid efficient in countering the larval stages of trematodes, a kind of parasitic flatworm (McGowan 1999, 332).

  Perhaps one day we’ll know much more about animals that cure themselves, just as we’ll know more about animals that drug themselves. The boundary between medicine and drug has never been clear in the human world—as demonstrated by the fact that all drugs are also powerful medicines—and almost certainly the same holds true for the animal kingdom.

  In the following chapters I will recount in detail the data gathered thus far on animals that drug themselves, basing my reports, essentially, on scientific writings on the subject. I am aware that these data are not exhaustive and that my work suffers somewhat in its system of bibliographic referencing. This is because what I am trying to draw attention to here—natural and intentional behavior interpretable as drug use in the animal world—is something that is, even now, underestimated, for the most part accorded little value or at the least interpreted in some other way.

  What follows, then, represents the first collection of data on the subject in its entirety, a first step toward the acceptance of something that is still considered largely inadmissible. All this simply follows the normal process of acceptance of any new idea: initially derided and opposed, it eventually forces an opening, or point of passage, through which rigid modes of thought and preestablished interpretive models can disintegrate. The new idea then flows forward until it attains complete acceptance and becomes incorporated into the common baggage of human cognitive experience.

  I would have made little headway in my research without Ronald K. Siegel’s brilliant text Intoxication: Life in Pursuit of Artificial Paradise, published in the United States in 1989. Siegel has conducted research and observations of animals ingesting drugs both in the field and in the laboratory; in his book he has gathered a dense body of documentation on the subject, which I have referred to again and again in the course of my own work.

  1

  Crazed Cows

  One of the most well known and striking examples of addictive behavior—that is, of true drug addiction—in animals involves locoweed, also called crazy grass or crazy seeds. This is a dense group of different kinds of wild grasses (at least forty) that spring up weedlike in the fields and belong, for the most part, to the legume family and are psychoactive for a variety of animals. So far, the animals we know to be affected by addiction to locoweed (a condition known as locoism) include mules, donkeys, horses, cows, sheep, antelopes, pigs, rabbits, and hens.

  The most sensational cases of locoism by far have been reported in North America. As far as we know, this behavior was first described in 1873 in California, as a result of observing the actions of horses and cows browsing at pasture. The most curious aspect of their behavior was that once an animal had learned to differentiate the specific grass that brought on intoxication from the numerous other kinds of grass it ingested, it would habitually seek out and consume that particular plant. Foals, calves, and other offspring of mothers who eat crazy grass are likewise addicted and soon learn to distinguish and seek out the intoxicating plant.

  Farmers in Kansas will never forget the terrible tales of the crazy grass epidemic of 1883, during which twenty-five thousand cows ceased eating normal pasture grasses almost completely, devoting themselves instead to an obstinate search for locoweed, less nourishing but—for some reason—more enticing. In 1938 Reko, working in Nebraska, identified Astragalus lambertii as locoweed, while in the vast prairies between Mexico and Montana, and reaching all the way into central Arizona, it was the dense and diffuse Astragalus mollissimus that earned the same rubric. A third species scattered throughout the prairies and meadowlands was Cystium diphysum (Reko 1996, 186–89). And a fourth locoweed was identified as Dioon edule, from the single surviving family of Cycadaceae, a palmlike tropical plant.

  There is yet another crazy grass, which Mexicans call garba
ncillo (Astragalus amphyoxis). Animals who have consumed it isolate themselves from the others, avoiding all companionship. They eat almost nothing, lose weight rapidly, and become extremely ill-tempered. If an attempt is made to lead them back to the herd, they rigidify and refuse to move. After balking completely, they distance themselves even farther from the flock.

  In some cases, such animals are gripped by states of intense agitation and fury. Without any apparent reason, they may hurl themselves, bellowing and snorting, at other animals or human beings, even those with whom they have enjoyed daily contact. Within a brief period of time the symptoms of abnormality multiply. The creatures begin to walk with an uncertain, heavy, stumbling gait, hind parts swaying; quite often they come to a halt, their legs splayed wide as if to better support them and stare fixedly to the front with bulging eyes. Every once in a while they are seized by a convulsed shuddering. These conditions share a remarkable affinity with the so-called symptoms of withdrawal manifested by alcoholics, especially during certain stages of detoxification. Also striking is the fact that the affected animals, dazed as they are, seem not to recognize obstacles; they trip frequently, smacking their heads against tree trunks or telephone poles and fail to move aside for other animals.

  However, the moment they are able to escape from the herd and browse on their beloved forage, they are swiftly renewed, becoming vivacious, vigorous, and energetic—even exuberant. Suddenly nothing in their behavior suggests any illness at all. Sometimes the reaction is different, however: an addicted animal may be found hiding somewhere, behind boulders or among the trees, in a state of profound prostration, either sitting up with its head erect and immobile or lying on the ground, its nose pointed upward and its eyes fixed and bulging, in a condition we can only describe as advanced drunkenness. Every so often it is seized by muscular cramps; also noticeable are a peculiar quivering of the eyelids and a squinty, cross-eyed stare directed at the sky. And as in all cases of poisoning, the animal’s breathing undergoes strange alterations, often becoming a labored panting. The breathing of healthy cows is characterized by deep inhalations followed by long pauses, but animals intoxicated by locoweed breathe brokenly, in quick, strained inhalations and brief exhalations, followed by short pauses.