I love, almost beyond my ability to describe it, the fact that there is an entire sub-genre of scientific endeavour devoted to feeding various animals psychotropic substances. Basically there is a group of scientists whose day to day job essentially involves them picking an animal and then deciding how they want to make it party. Bees on cocaine? It’s been done!
To learn more about the biochemistry of addiction, scientists in Australia dropped liquefied freebase cocaine on bees’ backs, so it entered the circulatory system and brain.
The scientists found that bees react much like humans do: cocaine alters their judgment, stimulates their behavior and makes them exaggeratedly enthusiastic about things that might not otherwise excite them.
Apparently when bees discover an exciting new food source they return to the nest and perform “a waggle dance” to let everyone know how awesome this new batch of pollen is. However, when coked off their tits on freebase, the bees “danced more frequently and more vigorously for the same quality food”. It may just be me, but goddamn that evokes a pretty amazing mental image. Bee discotech mother fuckers!
Another killer experiment of late has been research that suggests feeding mice copious amounts of red wine – or rather resveratrol, a constituent ingredient – actually increases their fitness and longevity:
The new research helps confirm and extend the possible benefits of the substance, resveratrol, and offers new insight into how it works — apparently by revving up the metabolism to make muscles burn more energy and work more efficiently. Mice fed large doses could run twice as far as they would normally.
But before you start mainlining the cask wine straight into your veins, the article goes on to state that in order for humans to get a similar effect they would have to “drink hundreds of glasses of wine a day”. So let that be a warning to you: if Fievel Mousekewitz ever challenges you to a drinking contest, just say no. Instead, hit him with a tennis racquet. Ain’t no amount of red wine that’s going to insulate you from that, mouse. That’s what you get for being small (Cf. Noah Baumbach in the New Yorker. Terrifying)
But, of course, this all just hails back to those experiments of the early 60s when a group of enterprising scientists decided to see what would happen to a spider’s ability to weave its web if they fed it various psychoactive substances. You can see some of the results here, but I think this video from 1960 explains it pretty well:
Makes sense.
So… anybody else kinda want to get some coke and party with the bees?
/Luke
14 responses so far ↓
1 manchux // Aug 14, 2009 at 12:58 pm
“I love, almost beyond my ability to describe it, the fact that there is an entire sub-genre of scientific endeavour devoted to feeding various animals psychotropic substances.”
If they had told me this when I was in high school chemistry or making my choices for university i would total be an animal pharmacist by now.
2 manchux // Aug 14, 2009 at 1:00 pm
i also have the mental image of us dressing up in Seinfeld-esque bee costumes and telling people about the awesome cafe we just found. And then doing it on coke.
3 luke // Aug 14, 2009 at 2:05 pm
I’M A BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
SUCK MY DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICK
4 Brett the pharmacist // Aug 14, 2009 at 2:48 pm
As a representative of the scientific profession, I would like to apologise to the wider community for the atrocious behaviour of my colleagues in what can only be described as bizarre and uneccessary cruelty to animals. I am in the front line and everyday see the effects that illicit drugs have on our arachnoid bretheren. Many have managed to break free from the oppression that is narcotic addiction and on my methadone program I currently treat 3 golden orbs, a couple of funnelwebs and a black widow (partner overdosed and was found lying dead in a StKilda shopfront).
Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to go and administer naltrexone to a christmas beetle …
5 Aqualec // Aug 14, 2009 at 3:54 pm
So this is how Spider-Man got his powers!
6 Luke // Aug 14, 2009 at 4:34 pm
and while we’re here, this is a ‘classique’ video of a cat after being fed mescaline analogues: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJEw3A_QO9o
7 Jimi // Aug 14, 2009 at 8:38 pm
It would be a bit of a cock forest with only 1 queen about.
8 Taylor // Aug 15, 2009 at 4:08 am
LOL! That’s fantastic…a whole insect world Studio 54 thing going down!
9 beckoning_ // Aug 15, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Oh yeah, science experiments on animals. That’s so funny I forgot to laugh
10 Luke // Aug 16, 2009 at 11:13 am
@beckoning_: ah, sorry for any offence caused. the post was very much intended to be ‘that’s science?!’ rather than ‘that’s science!’. the only animal i will ever be comfortable feeding psychoactive substances to are humans. more specifically, myself.
11 beckoning_ // Aug 17, 2009 at 6:57 pm
@Luke haha I understand. Or more appropriately ‘I understand!’
12 Kia // Aug 20, 2009 at 5:18 pm
I’d like to see what happens when an ape on e gets let loose in a shopping centre… Imagine this massive hairy ape comes towards you and gives you this big hug and it’s like ‘wooh wooh.. woh-woh-woh!’ which loosely translates as “you have big eyes… I love you man!”
13 Paul // Sep 11, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Animals on coke maybe thats how ended up with Rage apes on 28 days laters…
28 Day party yeah thats a come down
14 To Be Cruel to a Mule // Feb 11, 2010 at 4:27 pm
[...] previously waxed lyrical about such endeavours in this rousing piece about the ongoing practice of feeding animals psychotropic substances, but today I’m striking a more nostalgic tone and looking fondly back at the glory days of [...]
Leave a Comment