Octopus On Ecstasy And 2021 Oscar Winner

My Octopus Teacher won the best documentary Oscar this year. 

If you haven't watched it yet, please do so. 

Next, I am not thrilled by this ecstasy experiment on Octopus; some insights from the brilliant Octopus mind: 

They were given a high dose of MDMA first by dissolving it into the water, but they didn’t like it. The study author, Gul Dolen, put it like this:

“They really didn’t like it. They looked like they were freaked out. They were just taking these postures of super hypervigilance. They would sit in the corner of the tank and stare at everything.”

Not a great start for the study or the octopuses. They were grumpy before the drugs and now they were freaked out, too. But things got better.

When they were given lower doses, more the kind of dose that you or I might take if we were to ever do that kind of thing, something else happened. Something both strange, and exactly what you might expect. As Dolen says:

“After MDMA, they were essentially hugging… really just much more relaxed in posture, and using a lot more of their body to interact with the other octopus.”

Just like high humans at a festival, they were hugging. But there’s more. The once-grumpy, antisocial octopuses now “Somersaulted through the water as though they were dancing.” Somehow, as far as surface behaviour goes, MDMA seems to affect octopuses in the same ways as us.

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So What Did We Learn?

Aside from the obvious — octopuses love to hug on ecstasy too — it’s pretty useful for biologists to know. Because the creatures are so old and predate us by so long, it can give an indication of when some brain systems evolved. Basically, we probably picked up the brain system affected by the MDMA from our animal ancestors rather than it developing in humans as we evolved. It was there before us.

It also shows that basic brain chemistry plays a big role in our social psychology, whereas previously it was thought that complex brain systems were responsible.

More specifically, the study concluded a couple of bits for the people here for the science and not the high octopus:

• “Sociality is widespread across the animal kingdom.”
• “Serotonin is an evolutionarily ancient molecule.”
• “Neurotransmitter’s prosocial functions may be conserved across evolution.”

There’s plenty more if you wish to read the full study, here.

But to summarise, octopuses on ecstasy behave exactly as you would expect: they dance and hug each other.