Reindeer on shrooms

Reindeer tripping on shrooms? Drunk finches and starlings? Goats on speed? Jaguars on yage? In the Pharmaceutical Journal Online, Andrew Haynes presents a fascinating look at animal drug use. Apparently, the animals may have been the ones to turned us on to various recreational drugs. From PJ Online:

One such species, appropriately for a Christmassy article, is the reindeer, which goes to great lengths to search out the hallucinogenic fly agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria) – the one with the white-spotted red cap that garden gnomes like to sit on. Eating the toadstool makes reindeer behave in a drunken fashion, running about aimlessly and making strange noises. Head-twitching is also common.

Fly agaric is found across the northern hemisphere and has long been used by mankind for its psychotropic properties. But its use can be dangerous because it also contains toxic substances. Reindeer seem to metabolise these toxic elements without harm, while the main psychoactive constituents remain unmetabolised and are excreted in the urine. Reindeer herders in Europe and Asia long ago learnt to collect the reindeer urine for use as a comparatively safe source of the hallucinogen.

Another hallucinogen used by wild animals is the African plant iboga (Tabernanthe iboga). It has been reported from Gabon and the Congo that boars, porcupines, gorillas and mandrills will dig up and eat the powerfully hallucinogenic roots.

In the Canadian Rockies, wild bighorn sheep are said to take great risks to get at a rare psychoactive lichen. In scraping it off the rock surface they can wear their teeth down to the gums.

On the prairies of the south-west US, horses and other grazing mammals can become addicted to hallucinogen-containing plants known generically as locoweed. These plants, mainly species of Astragalus and Oxytropis, are normally avoided, but animals that try them can come back time and again for a repeat fix. Symptoms include altered gait, aimless wandering, impaired vision, erratic behaviour and listlessness.

"The animal world has its junkies too" (Thanks, Bob Pescovitz!)

• [bhtooefr]

  So, wait, cheesing is real, just with reindeer urine instead of cat urine?

• [Anonymous]

  I have heard it said that locoweed addiction is poorly supported; rather it seems that animals who have learned it is safe enough will eat it, since at some times of the year it is less toxic. I would love to see some more references.

• [Joseph Hertzlinger]

  Judging by the way reindeer are able to go all over the world in a single night, they must be on speed as well.

  OTOH, maybe we’re dealing with a quantum superposition of Santas and reindeer.

• [Anonymous]

  Here’s the video of exactly what you are talking about:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbfKub6xSKY&feature=player_embedded

  lou

  http:lougold.blogspot.com

• [Anonymous]

  hamburger bahnhof, berlin. you ll find these reindeer AND their urine there in a current exhibition…

• [Mitch_]

  Just don’t get any bright ideas about blowing pot smoke at the cat.

• [Anonymous]

  Some boring pointers.

  That mushroom in the picture is not Amanita muscaria, it some other species in the Amanita genus.

  Sami people have never used Fly agaric as hallucinogenic (neither did the Vikings), as one of the youtube videos linked to by one of the commentators claimed, it is myth (someone has even bothered to trace this myths original source, a book, google for it). It has been used as an insecticide and still is used in some byres in Sweden: boil it in milk and let the flies feast on the milk, just keep the cat away from the bowl.

  Fly agaric has historically been used against maggot infections (at least in Sweden), but I don’t believe it to be very effective. Infectious maggots are rare where reindeer graze, at least in the European areas, but there are a lot of horse flies (many enough to occasionally kill livestock) and mosquitoes (kill livestock frequently in Northern Sweden, Norway and Finland). Perhaps reindeer eat the mushrooms as a fly repellent, if it’s not just a myth that they eat them at all (next time I meet a reindeer keeper, I will try to remember to ask).

  On the other hand, cows love tobacco and some farmers use it as an addictive treat to make them easy to handle. As someone who likes to smoke very expensive cigars while hiking, I really hate farmers who have made their cows addicted to tobacco. If you keep your cigar in your clothes. they can literally strip you down in search of the delicious herb, or steal your rucksack and trash it if you have cigars in it.

• [tomservojr]

  Somewhere, Terence McKenna is smiling.

• [prettyb]

  Spiders on drugs:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzdsFiBbFc

• [Anonymous]

  This is supposedly behind the notion that “reindeer really fly”, though some think this notion comes from reindeer tending shamans who also ingested the mushroom.

• [Phikus]

  A little magic dust for the reindeer… A little for Santa Claus… A little more magic dust for the reindeer… A little more for Santa Claus…

• [seanboing]

  Red and white fly agaric = Santa Claus!

• [semiotix]

  Fly agaric is found across the northern hemisphere and has long been used by mankind for its psychotropic properties. But its use can be dangerous because it also contains toxic substances. Reindeer seem to metabolise these toxic elements without harm, while the main psychoactive constituents remain unmetabolised and are excreted in the urine.

  So if I’m reading this right, I should stop eating those dangerous shrooms and start drinking harmless, trip-tastic reindeer piss.

  Okay, I’m in.

• [Anonymous]

  “The animal world has its junkies too”

  It is true that the use of mind and mood altering substances is common throughout the animal kingdom, suggesting it is a universal biological drive similar to sex and nourishment. However scientific research by Ronald K. Siegel (“Intoxication: The Universal Drive for Mind-Altering Substances”) has shown that addiction only occurs in animals that have been domesticated or held in captivity by humans. Perhaps the same is true for the human animal itself, after all what is civilisation other than domestication?

• [technogeek]

  Sometimes it’s a matter of the psychoactive being bundled with other nutrients. I once lived in an area where you could tell that fall had arrived by the sharp spike in raccoon roadkill, due to them eating fermented windfall fruit and wandering around drunk. Lots of sugar in the fruit, and alcohol can also be metabolized for energy; if you’re trying to put on fat to last through the winter, that might be worthwhile even if getting drunk was undesirable.

  But, yeah, sometimes animals just do what they do because they enjoy it. Anyone who doubts that hasn’t spent enough time around animals.

• [Rob]

  There is a psychoactive lichen? Awesome.

• [elk]

  Do you hear that stoner daredevils? DANGEROUS! Stick to the safe magic shroom variety. Much more fun not going to the hospital.

• [Anonymous]

  How do you get reindeer to pee into a cup?

• [James MacAulay]

  Yup:

  http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/3136.html

  • [Anonymous]

    Who knew that “reindeer games” is a euphemism for “water sports”

• [grimc]

  Horses on horse?