Animals and Psychedelics

by Giorgio Samorini

  Chachaquila (Oxytropis lambertii), another type of locoweed especially enticing to bovids, produces a peculiar kind of intoxication accompanied by hallucinations and high excitement. Animals already familiar with the plant will suddenly hurl themselves free of the herd and escape, as if seized by the Furies, toward the very places herders most assiduously avoid: sites where the chachaquila grows. Following these berserk beasts is not only futile but inadvisable, since in their condition of withdrawal and craving they are fully capable of throwing themselves off cliffs or running from their pursuers at such wild speeds that they can drop dead of heart attacks. If the animals can be kept away from the dangerous grasses and held under scrupulous attention so that they do not wander off from the herd, their symptoms of excitation and withdrawal apparently diminish without further consequence and their psychic equilibrium reestablishes itself. This in itself, however, is not enough to cure them of the addiction. If rehabilitated cows later stumble upon their drug of choice they take up where they left off—eating it avidly, becoming deeply intoxicated, and, in the digestive phase that follows, irritable and aggressive (Reko 1996, 186–89).

  A surprising fact is that the more interested the browsing animals become in locoweed, the more widely it springs up in the pasture, becoming after a while the dominant plant. Many pastures have had to be abandoned by cattle farmers altogether, having been so invaded by locoweed that no other grasses can grow there. This may be caused by the scattering of seeds in the animals’ droppings or by some other, as yet unknown, ecological factor.

  Despite the repressive measures adopted by farmers (attempted eradication of the crazy grass, separation of newborn calves, foals, and lambs from their addicted mothers, and so on), the tenacity of the plant itself and of the animals in seeking it out and ingesting it remains one of the most ruinous scourges of North American zootechnics.

  One characteristic of locoism is precisely that tenacity—the stubbornness with which addicted animals seek out the inebriant plant. Even as farmers were eradicating the locoweed from certain pastures, for instance, cows and horses were observed stealing the sacks in which the grass had been gathered, even overturning the wagons in which the sacks had been packed. Horses in the grip of hallucinations and uncontrollable attacks of mania after having devoured the flowers and leaves of locoweed dig into the earth with their hooves to extract and eat the roots.

  Unfortunately, many addicted animals die even before the intrinsic toxicity of the locoweed can kill them, succumbing to malnourishment and starvation, since, in their single-minded search for the drug—which becomes, at last, their sole focus in life—they cease to eat other, more nourishing grasses. In the United States there are actual retreats dedicated to the recovery of animals addicted to locoweed, in which an attempt is made to rehabilitate them, interrupting the cycle of dependency so that they can be reintroduced to their proper work—that is, nourishing themselves healthily so as to attain a desirable weight, to be directed toward their more “natural” end: slaughter. Before long, perhaps, American supermarket shoppers will be able to purchase, at competitive prices, the meat of recovered cows, horses, and pigs!

  The widespread problem of locoweed madness in cattle is probably a consequence of intensive breeding and raising, and so indirectly influenced by human practices. In other words, the frenzied drug use we observe in these animals may be due to their massively crowded condition, dictated by human exigency. Since cows do not exist in the wild, we have been unable to observe the phenomenon as it might occur in a natural state. Unless we discover other grazing quadrupeds free of human interference seeking out and eating locoweed, the question will remain open.

  Various types of locoweed are toxic—generally neurotoxic—to human beings, while others, taken as teas, induce tranquilization and a mild sensation of detachment from the surrounding world. Higher doses result in overstimulation and hallucinations (Siegel, 1989, 52–54).

  Loco intoxication is not confined to North America but is found to a greater or lesser degree on every continent. In Australia, grazing animals attracted by the leguminous Swainsonia galegifolia are called indigo eaters; like North American cows, they isolate themselves from the herd, suffer hallucinations, and feed on the drug to the exclusion of all other grasses. In Europe one of the most common locoweeds is broom (Cytisus scoparius), also a leguminous plant capable of producing psychoactive or toxic effects in human beings, according to the dose. When given in low doses to sheep, however, the plant encourages vivacious behavior. L. Lewin, in his Phantastika, reports that “certain breeds of sheep native to the German moors are partial to it. It is therefore frequently planted on the heathlands, and the sheep are herded slowly across them without being given a chance to halt. Certain animals eat it greedily and passionately and so enter a state of excitation followed by complete loss of consciousness. Such creatures easily fall prey to foxes or flocks of crows. They are known as ‘the drunkards.’” (Lewin 1981, 2: 179.)

  Different types of crazy grass belong to the legume family and to the Astragalus, Oxytropis, and Lathyrus genera. The active principle miserotoxin, poisonous to humans, has been identified in the first two, while neurolathyritic compounds are present in the third. These neruolathyrogens, aside from inducing advanced drunkenness in animals, also effect a state of toxicity in humans. This state, known as neurolathyrogenic, was epidemic in the past during times of famine when flour for bread making was cut with the seeds and pods of Lathyrus, popularly known as vetch or tare (Camporesi 1980). Lathyrism is characterized, among other things, by spastic paralysis in the lower limbs of human beings and the hind limbs of domestic animals.

  Other species of locoweed in America are Croton fruticulosus (Euphorbiaceae), Lobelia cliffordiana (Lobeliaceae), and Lupinus elegans (Leguminosae).

  Studies of the Australian locoweed Swainsonia canescens have revealed the presence of the alkaloid indolizine, responsible for loco intoxication in animals. This same indolizine alkaloid, as well as its by-product N-oxide, is also present in Astragalus lentiginosus, the spotted locoweed found in Utah (Molyneux and James 1982).

  2

  Alcohol and Animals: From Drunken Elephants to Sauced Snails

  Pachyderms’ passion for alcohol has long been famous. African elephants are avid for the fruits of several kinds of palm tree: doum, marula, mgongo, and palmyra (Borassus). As they ripen, these fruits tend to ferment swiftly, sometimes while still attached to the tree. Eleph ants will devour the fermented fruits already scattered over the earth and then shake the tree, beating it with their trunks and bodies until further fruits fall. Fermentation of these fruits produces ethyl alcohol in concentrations as high as 7 percent, and this process continues when the fruit enters the animals’ digestive systems, resulting in the production and absorption of even greater quantities of alcohol. To compound matters, groups of elephants appear to compete over the fruits, each of them trying to eat the most fruit in the shortest time possible. Their consequent drunkenness is anything but accidental; they are quite clearly seeking a state of intoxication. Although a herd usually ranges no more than about six miles through the forest on a given day, when these palm fruits (especially those of the Borassus) ripen, adult males may distance themselves from the herd and cover more than twenty miles in a day to reach trees whose location they retain firmly in their memories.

  Once drunk, the elephants become overexcited and tend to jump and startle at unusual sounds or sudden movements on the part of other animals or human beings. They scare easily and react defensively, becoming extremely aggressive. A herd of drunken elephants is considered a serious danger to humans.

  Elephants live in structured groups with matriarchal hierarchies. A young elephant will commonly put its trunk inside its mother’s mouth to take and taste what she is eating, thus learning what to choose for itself. If its mother is feeding on fermenting fruit, her calf will become intoxicated as well, learning early on to appreciate and seek out a state of inebriation.

  “Thi
s information is retained and used when a female calf grows up and becomes the new matriarch. Then younger animals learn from her, and a local tradition is established. The collective wisdom of centuries can be carried by these animals unless a matriarch is killed by poachers and the chain is broken. Thus the seasonal binges on alcohol become part of elephant behavior (Siegel 1989, 119–20).”

  The Asian elephants of Bengal and Indonesia are also attracted to fallen fermented fruits, especially the enormous, heavy fruits of the durian, or Durio zibethinus. Actually, many different kinds of animals eagerly seek out fermented durian fruit: monkeys, orangutans, honey bears, squirrels, flying foxes (fruit bats), elephants, and human beings. Even Sumatran tigers, the ultimate carnivores, make an exception for durian, although it is not clear whether they appreciate it for its intoxicating effect or eat it for some other reason. But their passionate determination to possess it is well known among the native people of Sumatra, who report cases in which children carrying baskets of durian back to their villages were attacked by tigers, which, instead of killing them, simply stole their harvest.

  Elephants that have feasted on durian tend to sway and fall down, lolling on the earth in a state of lethargy. Monkeys lose motor coordination, roll their heads, and climb trees only with great effort. Flying foxes, the largest bats in the world, feed on fermented durian fruits in the night. Their ensuing intoxication distorts the complex radar system by which they orient themselves during their nocturnal flights to such a degree that they frequently fall to the ground.

  Elephants do not limit their search for a high to fermented fruits alone but rapidly head in the direction of any source emanating the scent of alcohol. In western Bengal in 1985 a herd of 150 elephants burst into a clandestine laboratory and gulped down an enormous quantity of distilled malt liquor. Wildly drunk, they roved around the nearby territory, galloping in all directions and crushing and killing five people. A dozen or so other people were injured and seven brick homes and about twenty huts were destroyed. Dumbo, the imaginary flying elephant of cartoon fame who sees dancing pink elephants himself after drinking alcohol, originated from the knowledge of his real, wild prototypes’ fondness for drink.

  Fruits and other vegetation subject to fermentation inebriate various species of animals—not only mammals but birds and even insects. In the American West, for example, sapsuckers—a kind of woodpecker—use their beaks to drill holes in trees to feed on the sap that oozes into them. Exposed to the proper temperature, this sap will ferment, producing alcohol. It then attracts various other animals, such as hummingbirds, squirrels, and other woodpeckers, who get drunk while feeding on the fermented sap in the pit created by the first bird. Most such cases are considered to be inadvertent—accidental ingestions of alcohol in the guise of nourishment. But given the tendency on the part of scholarly researchers to negate any natural elements in animal drug use, we cannot be too certain of this.

  It seems that even slugs and snails are attracted to alcohol. Farmers and gardeners in Italy and elsewhere make use of this fact to rid orchards or gardens of both by putting out low, wide containers (plastic flowerpot saucers are perfect) into which they have poured a little beer or wine. The mollusks are easily enticed into such traps, converging on them in the dozens from every direction, piling up one on top of another. The heaps of slugs or snails, apparently drunk and unable to move, can then be simply scooped up and eliminated.

  Farmers in northern Italy have long used a similar method to invite hedgehogs to live in their gardens. Hedgehogs are formidable insectivores, and their presence in any garden guarantees that cabbages and salad greens will flourish undevoured by the bugs. Since these little mammals are also partial to alcohol, placing a bowl of watered wine with a handful of slugs in the middle of the garden every so often is a surefire way to ensure that they’ll settle down there (Celli 1999, 15–16).

  3

  Frenzied Feliness

  Many members of the feline family, from domestic cats to tigers, become intoxicated after eating or chewing the leaves of certain herbs. The most well known example, of course, is the behavior of cats around Nepeta cataria, or catnip. Nepeta grows wild in uncultivated fields, and the dried leaves are commercially available as well, usually sewn into little bags or pillows and sold as “rejuvenating and invigorating” toys for domestic cats. Nepeta should not be confused with another cat herb sold in pet stores, which is a type of grass whose stems, when chewed, induce vomiting in cats and act to purge their digestive systems.

  When a cat is offered catnip, its behavior is observable as a succession of four separate stages. First the cat sniffs the plant (which smells like mint and/or alfalfa to humans); second, it licks the leaves and sometimes chews them. Ronald K. Siegel says in Intoxication: Life in Pursuit of Artificial Paradise that the “chewing is often interrupted when the cat momentarily stares into space with a blank expression, then quickly shakes its head from side to side. In the third stage the cat will usually rub against the plant with its chin and cheek. Last, there is a ‘head over’ roll with rubbing of the entire body. Extremely sensitive cats may also flip from side to side by rolling over on their backs. The four-stage reaction runs its fixed course in approximately ten minutes. . . . The nature of the pleasurable intoxication becomes increasingly evident when high doses of catnip in the form of concentrated extracts are offered to the animals. The subsequent reactions are intense: cats head-twitch violently, salivate profusely, and show other signs of central nervous system excitation. Males have spontaneous erections, while females adopt mating stances, complete with vocalization and ‘love-biting’ of any available object.

  “The similarity of the catnip response to the normal sexual behavior of cats is striking. The presentation of catnip results in the rolling pattern of behavior that is exhibited by estrus females during the course of normal sexual displays. These displays have prompted naturalists to speculate that catnip once served the evolutionary function in the wild of preparing cats for sex, a natural springtime aphrodisiac” (Siegel 1989, 62–63).

  But domestic cats, many of whom pass their entire lives without ever seeing a catnip plant, are losing the capacity to feel the effect of their drug; current studies show that only 50 to 70 percent of indoor cats respond to catnip at all. Research has shown that the response or lack of response to the plant by a given cat is determined by the presence or absence of a particular gene. Perpetuation of generation after generation of cats raised without contact with catnip is genetically impoverishing these animals by depriving them of the possibility of response to their own natural drug (Todd 1962).

  Other studies, conducted by G. F. Palen and G. V. Goddard in 1966, have yielded the following observations: “A typical ‘body rolling’ begins with the cat pressing his face to the floor and rubbing his jaw back and forth, progressively lengthening his body with paws outstretched before him, ears tipped forward, and claws out. The cat then rolls his head and entire body from one side to another. The duration of this rolling is extremely variable, lasting from a few seconds to four or five minutes, and is repeated from one to fifteen times. This reaction to catnip occurs independently of sex or age.”

  Responsive cats given the opportunity of contact with catnip seek it out daily. Specific ethological studies have demonstrated that these cats are as “happy” and healthy as cats who have no contact with the drug, if not more so. I can personally vouch for the frequency of this habit as seen in the cats that come daily to visit the catnip plant growing in my garden. My garden is frequented by all the cats in the neighborhood, especially in springtime, when they come into heat and the plant is at the height of its vegetative phase, generously filling the air with its mentholated perfume. Toward the end of spring, when the plant flowers, its scent diminishes—as do the visits of the cats to my garden. My catnip plant seems to be the only one in the area, and at certain times in the spring, especially in late afternoon, my garden is crawling with cats. They don’t seem to enjoy sharing their experiences w
ith the plant but instead maintain a certain distance from each other: each cat waits for its own turn when the area around the catnip is free of undesired colleagues. Males and females approach it indiscriminately.

  Nepeta cataria, like many of its congenerous species, produces volatile terpenoids called nepetalactones. These are the compounds responsible for the plant’s intoxicating effect on felines, from domestic cats to tigers. They exert a psychoactive effect on human beings as well, although it is very slight. Laboratory research has shown that catnip also intoxicates other animal species, from insects to mice, modifying their behavior markedly. Nepetalic acid is the most potent of the various compounds produced by this plant (Harney, Leary, and Barofsky 1974).