In my humble opinion, the only valid field of scientific inquiry is giving psychoactive drugs to animals to see whether they get fucked up on them. Everything else is just busywork. Luckily for an inquiring mind such as myself, there’s a new study out which does precisely that – in this case, giving MDMA to a bunch of octopuses.
There was actually a point to loading up our undersea friends with pingers, though. Researchers at John Hopkins University are trying to work out if there’s an ancient evolutionary basis for our social behaviours. Human beings are separated from octopuses by about 500 million years of evolution, so if we can identify common behavioural traits, then we’re significantly closer to answering that question.
So, did the molly change the behaviour of the octopuses? My friends, it did. Apparently prior to being hit with a dose of love potion, the creatures weren’t overly fond of one another – hostile, even. This is pretty standard for the species. After being drugged up, they became notably more “touchy-feely”. This suggests that serotonin – the chemical which floods your brain when you’re fucked out of your mind on MDMA – has been a trigger for social behaviours for a very long time.
According to researchers, the octopuses performed a number of behaviours which seem to parallel humans when they’re off their gob on eccies. Like this, from The Guardian:
There appeared to be other parallels with the euphoria experienced by people who take MDMA. “Some were being very playful, doing water acrobatics or spent time fondling the airstone [aquarium bubbler],” said Dölen.
Others stretched out all eight arms and just floated around, doing what the researchers described as “water ballet”.
If that doesn’t sound like your mate flitting around someone’s backyard at a house party after taking a cap, then I don’t know what to tell you.
This is significant, because octopus brains are radically different to our own – at least structurally. This study could prove that regardless of how different our brains are to other members of the animal kingdom, there is still a fundamental role for chemicals like serotonin in forming social behaviours. ]
Of course, the scientists realise that their study is funny. Gül Dölen, lead investigator on the study, confirmed that they did get interesting inquiries:
People are like, ‘Have you got any pictures of octopuses holding glow sticks?’ which I kind of ignore because that wasn’t really our objective. MDMA is a great tool for investigating whether or not an octopus can become social.
C’mon pal. Give one a glowstick. It would be funny. You’re not above doing that.
There you go, folks. Octopuses love to get fucked up, proving that every living entity in the universe is united by our commitment to getting chemically fucked up at any and all opportunities.
