As the saying goes, truth is often stranger than fiction. You might know that some monkeys seek fermented fruit with high alcohol content, and so do elephants. Horse owners are familiar with the fact that their equine companions sometimes chill out by eating hallucinogenic weeds, and we humans have probably cornered the market on intoxicants. As it turns out, other mammals, including cetaceans, seem to enjoy taking a break from reality now and then. Researchers have recently discovered that dolphins seem to have a drug of choice – toxic pufferfish.
Puff Puff Pass? Dolphins Filmed Passing Pufferfish to One Another
Footage from an exciting new BBC documentary series called “Spy in the Pod” has revealed a group of dolphins apparently using a pufferfish to get high. Experts who analyzed the footage say that the dolphins’ deliberate – and expert – handling of the toxic fish imply that this is a ritual they may enjoy with frequency.
Though pufferfish produce a defensive chemical that’s potent enough to kill, it seems to put dolphins into a trancelike state when taken in small doses. The dolphins in the film were gently mouthing the pufferfish, not tearing it apart or even eating it as they do with the fish they prey upon. In fact, the pufferfish was alive, apparently frightened and attempting to escape, as the dolphins carefully mouthed it before floating it on the surface so the next member of the pod could have a “puff.” They kept at it for 20 to 30 minutes, at one point floating upside down just under the water’s surface and seemingly enjoying the feeling of being mesmerized by their own reflections overhead. Once the dolphins finished toying with the pufferfish, it deflates itself and swims away.
Zoologist Rob Pilley, who had the opportunity to work as a producer for the new series, says that the young dolphins were “purposely experimenting with something we know to be intoxicating.” He went on to say that the dolphins were clearly antagonizing the pufferfish just enough to get it to release the right amount of tetrodotxin, the toxin which it’s believed the dolphins were using as a narcotic.
Anyone who has ever considered eating pufferfish knows that tetrodotoxin is nothing to be taken lightly. In small doses, the toxin causes a tingling feeling that can lead to numbness, but ingest a little too much, and paralysis and even death follows – at least for us humans. Tetrodotoxin is about 1,200 times more toxic than cyanide, and is deadlier than even the hardest drugs humans take, including methamphetamines and cocaine. A single pufferfish produces enough of the toxin to kill approximately 30 humans.
The scientific community is still pondering whether dolphins get high on pufferfish intentionally, or whether the behavior caught by Spy in the Pod was just a case of a group of young dolphins playing with a fascinating fish in a different way, discovering that the small doses of neurotoxin has a narcotic effect and sharing it with one another while vocalizing and playing happily between puffs. Do dolphins really use pufferfish to get high? It seems so – but the truth has yet to be uncovered.