It is clear that many animals are attracted to elements of intoxicating and hallucinogenic experiences

 In the Siberian summer, reindeer feast on a variety of mushrooms. Under the birch trees, they seek out their favorite: the Amanita muscaria. This red-capped and white-flecked mushroom is also called fly agaric because flies attracted to it will become stunned and fall into a helpless stupor after drinking its juices. Domesticated reindeer become unmanageable in their greed for this mushroom and act as if they are drunk: running aimlessly about, making noise, head-twitching, and isolating themselves from the herds. They may be no different from the Norse Vikings who ate the fly agaric to produce the ecstatic reckless rage for which they earned the nickname “Berserkers.”

The active principle is ibotenic acid, a secondary substance that is transformed by the body into an equally intoxicating chemical, muscimole. The tribesmen noticed that the reindeer display an equally intense passion for human urine that contains the muscimole metabolite. Whenever they smell urine in the vicinity, reindeer scamper to the source and start fighting with each other for access to the clumps of yellow-stained snow. The urine has the same intoxicating effect on the reindeer as the fly agaric mushrooms. The reindeer’s pursuit of urine, with or without muscimole, is so aggressive that travelers to the area have been warned about the danger of urinating in the open tundra when there are reindeer around. The Chukchee tribesmen utilize this passion by saving the muscimole-spiked urine in sealskin or sheet-metal containers for use in rounding up the reindeer or extending their own intoxications for another day. While they value the reindeer, the mushrooms are more precious. The barter price for a single fly agaric can be two or three reindeer. The reindeer may feed and clothe the body, but the mushrooms nourish the soul with ecstastic visions and this is worth more to the natives.

The mushroom chemicals are so potent that the smallest bite can produce a great deal of bizarre behavior. Head-twitching is a common sight when fly agaric is nibbled by deer, squirrels, or chipmunks. Herds of Canadian caribou, close relatives of the reindeer, show the biggest effects. During their migrations, the wild caribou move in a long single file column, as precisely spaced as pearls on a string. Occasionally the route will pass clusters of fly agaric, and adult females have been seen nibbling them. Within an hour or two, these caribou leave the column and run with an awkward side-to-side shaking of their hindquarters. If it were not for the accompanying head-twitching, this movement would be virtually identical to the “dance of death” the mother caribou will use to lure wolves or other enemies away from their young. Since the intoxicated and disoriented caribou may lag behind the column, leaving the young unprotected as well, the results may still be the same. Either mother or young may be lost to the wolves, not unlike the intoxicated robins preyed upon by cats.

While fly agaric may not kill animals directly, it can kill people, although the consequences of the intoxications are minimized for the tribes who sun-dry or toast the mushrooms, processes that seem to weaken the toxins. Nonetheless, eating even one mushroom will induce twitching, trembling, slight convulsions, and numbness in the limbs. As uncomfortable as these effects may seem to an outside observer, the users are happy and often experience a desire to dance and sing along with their hallucinations. Clinical observations have revealed a jovial, almost drunken disposition, flushing of the skin, and a slight tearing of the eyes. This picture of intoxication reminds one of American cartoonist Thomas Nast’s famous portrayal of Santa Claus with twinkling eyes and cherry nose, driving a sleigh pulled by reindeer flying over the treetops.

Hallucinogenic mushrooms such as the fly agaric have been dispersed throughout the world as widely as the image of Santa himself. And magic or sacred mushrooms, as some varieties are called, have appeared around the world, popping up from the Kamchatka peninsula of Siberia to the highlands of Mexico. The sacred mushrooms vary in many botanical characteristics but all contain derivatives of a powerful hallucinogenic substance, psilocybin.

These psilocybin derivatives are less intoxicating than the secondary chemicals in fly agaric and cause little disruption in the behavior of cattle, sheep, and goats that have been observed browsing them. Smaller animals receive proportionately larger doses and exhibit more dramatic effects. On ranches in Hawaii and Mexico, I saw dogs deliberately nipping the caps off psilocybin mushrooms and swallowing them. A few minutes later the dogs were running about in circles, head-twitching, yelping, and refusing to respond to human commands. Such behavior is similar to that recorded in Innocent Killers by Jane Goodall, who observed a jackal cub, Rufus, eating a mysterious mushroom:

Ten minutes later he seemed to go mad. He rushed around in circles and then charged, flatout, first at a Thompson’s gazelle and then at a bull wildebeest. Both animals, possibly as surprised as I was, hurried out of his way. Could the mushroom have caused hallucinations? Had Rufus been on a trip? The question must remain unanswered as I could not find another for identification.

Despite the nibbling and browsing, most animals appear to have a natural indifference to mushrooms. Primates, however, seem to love them or hate them. We offered some grocery store mushrooms to the residents in the UCLA primate center. Our laboratory-reared monkeys seemed to like them. But monkeys captured from the wild were reluctant to taste them. Several displayed alarm and fear at the mere sight of them. One stump-tailed macaque became so panicked, banging itself against the cage walls, that it had to be tranquilized so as to avoid injuring itself. It is inviting to speculate about previous experiences that these animals may have had with more potent mushrooms in their natural habitats. When one of our laboratory rhesus monkeys was given a psilocybin mushroom that caused it to become disoriented and confused, the original indifference to mushrooms was replaced by an intractable refusal to accept any future offerings of mushrooms, harmless or psychoactive. Perhaps some primates in the wild learn similar lessons.

Cultures of Homo sapiens also seem divided into groups with differing attitudes regarding the eating of wild mushrooms; most are indifferent but there are also mycophiles and mycophobes. So it is hard to understand the universal esteem granted to the truffle, a fungus that lives out its life in the dark, dank underground of oak forests. The truffle, like catnip, illustrates how a plant can evoke a powerful attraction because it excites a basic biological drive in animals.

Truffles exist in a subterranean world that seems a most unfitting habitat for an aphrodisiac. These fungi resemble crispy, jet black sea sponges; most are the size of Ping-Pong balls but, at depths of up to one meter, some have been as large as giant potatoes and weigh in at almost a kilogram. One of the most expensive foods in the world, truffles have been referred to as “black diamonds,” although Italian and Arctic varieties are white. Field mice and rabbits burrow into them and destroy them. Even chickens will try to get to them by scratching the surface soil. But pigs are the best truffle hunters, capable of detecting the musky odor from great distances.

The pig’s passion for truffles is the same as our own, according to Etruscan and Roman myths that attribute aphrodisiac qualities to the fungi. Even contemporary folktales claim that particularly odorous truffles will encourage sex by making women more tender and men more agreeable. There is a strong chemical basis for the stories.

Truffles contain a steroid, androstenol, which gives them the pronounced musklike scent and a nutty taste. This same steroid is synthesized in the testes of the boar and transferred to the salivary gland from which it is secreted during premating behavior. Androstenol makes boars more aggressive and tends to immobilize the sow in a mating stance. The concentration of the steroid in truffles is about twice the concentration found in boars, hence the vigorous interest shown by pigs in search of this delicacy. Androstenol is also synthesized by human males in the testes and secreted by axillary sweat glands, giving male sweat a musky odor that plays a preparatory role in human sexual behavior.

All this may have been appreciated by the early Spaniards, who called the truffle trufa, meaning “testicles of earth itself,” and used it to facilitate sexual behavior. And it may be an old story to Northern flying squirrels, which have been seen feeding on truffles that lie just below the surface of the Alaskan soil. In northern California, a flying squirrel was observed gliding to a slightly exposed truffle lying on the ground. After eating for a few minutes, it left carrying a small piece of the truffle. The squirrel was followed to its nest in an abandoned woodpecker’s hole. It took the truffle inside to where its mate awaited. One can only imagine the characteristic mating behavior of flying squirrels that followed: the sexual partners wrap their arms around each other and the male uses his flight skin like a cloak to surround the female.

Mystery and superstition have always shielded the effects of another fungus, ergot, from full view. Ergot is a parasitic fungus that infects rye, wheat, and other grasses. The fungus forms sclerotia—hard, dark purple bodies that secretly replace the grains and seeds in the cereals. The sclerotium itself is a veritable laboratory of potent chemicals known as ergot alkaloids, whose effects are foretold by their purple color—an ominous color that Homeric hymns have linked with the awesome powers of Lord Hades and the underworld.

Ergot alkaloids are structurally similar to neurochemicals present in the nervous tissue of warm-blooded animals. They can interfere with the flow of blood through the body as well as seriously alter the perceptions and movements of the animals. Grazing animals were probably the first to encounter this fungus, which is still a hazard to livestock. A large single meal of contaminated grasses may produce agitation and muscle spasms. The animals stagger in stiff, bounding movements, their eyes jerk back and forth, and eventually they fall. They sit with dazed appearance, isolated from the flock or herd, but as the intoxication subsides they rejoin the group. The effects from chronic feeding are not noticeable for several weeks or longer, the length of time depending on the concentration of ergot alkaloids in the grasses. Lameness appears first, then limbs become numb and necrotic. Gangrene finally erupts. Cattle stricken with gangrenous ergotism tend to segregate themselves but still remain with the herd when it starts moving. The herd leaves behind 5 percent who are prostrate, starving, and dying.

Grazing animals are not alone in their ergot intoxications. Some adventurous farmers have been tempted to taste the ergot-spotted grains after observing unusual behavior in their animals; but the first human use was probably an accident experienced by ancient agriculturists. When the infected grains found their way into breads that were then eaten, mass intoxications and poisonings resulted. The first intentional use followed shortly after the first accidents when the ancient Athenians conducted secret ceremonies in the temple at Eleusis. There, during these nocturnal “mysteries,” individuals drank kykeon, a mixture of barley with ergot, water, and mint. For two millennia, until suppression of these rites by Christianity in the fourth century A.D., thousands of people were given this unique experience annually. Participants included Aristotle, Sophocles, Plato, Aeschylus, Pindar, and several Roman emperors. It was a blissful experience, according to Homer, one that could lift men out of a gloomy darkness and give them what Cicero called “a reason to live in joy.” Confronted by a profoundly religious experience, the initiates surrendered to the visions with awe and wonderment.

The intentional uses of hallucinogenic plants by both animals and native peoples have been events just as infrequent and structured as the passage through the portals at Eleusis. The picture of animals chewing on yaje vines, iboga roots, or fly agaric mushrooms is something that is seen only intermittently. Similarly, the participants at Eleusis came only once a year; Datura ceremonies may happen only once in a lifetime; and the modern use of magic mushrooms is as intermittent in native cultures as it is at high school parties.

Ritual and recreational intoxications from hallucinogens do not occur continually with humans. A major reason for this controlled use is tolerance, which can develop quickly and block most effects. In order to overcome tolerance, increasingly larger doses have to be used. But such large doses are not always easy to come by in nature and they still may fail to break through the massive tolerance that develops to drugs such as ergot alkaloids. Humans have learned that a better way to handle the drugs is to space the doses over time, thus allowing for many weeks—even months—between intoxications. This prevents tolerance and gives people an opportunity to reflect on the experience and assimilate it into their lives. Since some animals, such as rats, also take only intermittent samples of hallucinogens in the wild, perhaps they are doing the same thing.

Periodic intoxications are seen in several animals that seem to know much about hallucinogenic plants and generally avoid the strong psychoactive parts. There is a suggestion that they also know what they are doing when they depart from their usual feeding to eat the psychoactive portions. For example, morning glories, which contain the same alkaloids as ergot, are eaten by rats, which feed regularly on the plant’s vines and fruits. The rodents tend to avoid the larger concentration of alkaloids in the seeds. Yet, when disturbed by severe weather conditions, a rat will occasionally snack on a single seed, then display the characteristic head-twitches of intoxication.

I once observed two Hawaiian mongooses depart from their regular diet of meat, eggs, and juicy fruits to chew the highly potent seeds of a silver morning glory that had been planted in their spacious outdoor pen. The mongooses twitched and circled their pen, then appeared calmed for several hours. During the next few months, the mongooses ignored the seeds. Then I observed one mongoose eating the seeds again, but it was on a special occasion: its mate had just died and a tropical storm had reduced much of the pen to a field of mud. Morning glory seeds are used by modern Mexican Indians to console themselves in times of trouble; perhaps the animals are doing the same.

It is clear that many animals are attracted to elements of intoxicating and hallucinogenic experiences. The real danger is when their natural infrequent intoxications are repeated, when the pursuit is so passionate that a life-threatening pattern of behavior is established. Birds do this with berries but they are protected by seasonal ripening. Bees do it with the stupefying nectars of specialized Umbelliferae flowers, but are also protected from frequent use by seasonal flowering. However, industrious ants can do it all the time inside their colonies. They provide a powerful example of a severe addiction to a disorienting intoxicant.

A variety of ants lives in symbiotic relationship with special beetles. The ants, playing the role of hosts, provide food and care for their beetle guests. In return, the beetles produce secretions from their abdominal areas and allow the ants to lick them. The ants may become so overwhelmed by the intoxicating nature of these secretions that they become temporarily disoriented and less sure of their footing. Entomologists have labeled the ants’ passion both a love and an addiction. Love is seen in the care and feeding the ant extends to the beetle larvae, which are accepted as part of the ant’s own brood. Consider the example of the yellow ant, Lasius flavus, and the Lomechusa beetle, named after an ancient Roman poisoner. In times of danger, the ants will even move the beetle larvae to safety before they tend to their own eggs. The addiction is manifested by the worker ants, which seem totally disinterested in anything but the intoxicating secretion produced by the beetle. Consequently, the ants allow more Lomechusa beetles to move into the colony, resulting in a corresponding dwindling of the ant population. Excessive intake of the intoxicant can cause such mania in the colony that female ant larvae become damaged in such a way that they develop into useless cripples rather than reproductive queens. Accordingly, “Lomechusa-mania,” a case of severe addiction, can contribute to the decline and fall of the ant society. The case provides a true fable for our species to contemplate regarding the presence of hallucinogenic drugs in the modern workplace.

Intoxication ...

Ronald K. Siegel