Whatever you do, don’t give elephants LSD

Animals take to drugs just as readily as we do. Sometimes they avail themselves of natural highs, and sometimes lab animals get very fond of substances they are fed for research. So, sit back with your stimulant of choice and enjoy New Scientist‘s round-up of animals on drugs.

1. Wallabies on opium

The marsupials of Tasmania have found a means of passing the time on Australia’s island state that could also explain mysterious local crop circles. Wallabies have been munching the poppies grown for opium by the pharmaceutical industry.


“We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles,” the attorney general was quoted in The Mercury newspaper.

Sheep and deer have also been reported as being raving opium fiends.

2. Elephants on acid

In 1962, the director of a zoo in Oklahoma had the bright idea of firing a syringe dart containing almost 300 milligrams of LSD – about 3000 times the normal dose a hippie would take – into one of his elephants. Sadly, the animal went crazy, then died.

Elephants are regularly reported going on booze-fuelled rampages in India, but zoologists calculating the amount the animals would have to drink to get rowdy have cleared them of being under the influence. The aggressive elephants are simply defending their territories, apparently.

3. Shrews on booze

Pen-tailed tree shrews in Malaysia gorge themselves on the flowers of the bertam palm, which contain fermented nectar of up to 3.8 per cent alcohol.

Unlike their distant human relatives, however, tree shrews quickly metabolise most of the alcohol they consume into a by-product called ethyl glucuronide (EtG). The stuff ends up safely stashed in the shrews’ fur, at levels normally found only in severely alcoholic humans.

4. Pets on Prozac

In 2007, the US Food and Drug Administration licensed a drug containing the same serotonin-reuptake inhibitor as Prozac for use in dogs. Psychiatric drugs are also used in birds, though animal welfare groups worried that the use of such drugs to treat behavioural problems in animals would create a population of “pill-popping pets”.

5. Merry Macaques

Type “drunk” and the name of pretty much any animal into YouTube and you’ll be rewarded with hilarious footage of inebriated beasts. Bears, for example made the news in this clip.

In this study, however, alcoholic female macaques self-administered so much booze that they stopped ovulating. The study was conducted in order to uncover why some alcoholic women stop having periods.

6. Mice on speed

Mice given huge doses of methamphetamine have shown that drug cravings persist for months after withdrawal from the drug. The rodents were spiked with doses of speed equivalent to those taken by addicts on a binge. Researchers found long-lasting changes in key communication pathways in the brain. Brain changes in the mice lasted for more than four months, equivalent to years in humans.

7. Monkeys on marijuana

One study suggested that monkeys “seek out” injections of THC – the active ingredient in cannabis – although this was criticised as “pseudoscience”, admittedly by pro-marijuana groups.

8. Uninhibited fruit flies

Drosophila flies allowed entry to an alcohol-strewn “fly pub” not only got drunk – they developed homosexual tendencies. Repeated doses of booze led male flies to start courting other males. The researchers claimed that the finding may reveal how alcohol loosens human sexual inhibitions.

9. Caterpillars on coke

Drug cartels in Columbia have a more than the CIA to worry about. Unlike most insects, the caterpillar Eloria noyesi feeds on the leaves of coca plants. A comparison of the dopamine receptors in the coke caterpillar with those of the silkworm, which doesn’t feed on cocaine plants, revealed that E. noyesi has evolved resistance to the effects of the drug.

10. Chimps smoking

A female chimp in a Zhengzhou zoo in Henan province, China, reportedly took up smoking as a result of sexual frustration. Chimps in South Africa have also been filmed sucking on cancer sticks.

11. Spiders on… pretty much everything

Depending on your point of view, arachnids are either the luckiest of lab animals, or the sorriest. At NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama scientists dosed spiders with marijuana, the “downer” chloral hydrate, the “upper” Benzedrine and on caffeine. The more toxic the chemical, the more deformed the web, says NASA, who hope to use spiders in place of other lab animals.