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What Ecstasy Does To Octopuses (theatlantic.com)
Gul Dolen, a neuroscientist at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine who studies how the cells and chemicals in animal brains influence animals' social lives, gave ecstasy to octopuses and recorded her observations. The study, published in the journal Current Biology, suggests that the psychoactive drug that can make people feel extra loving toward others also has the same effect on octopuses. An anonymous reader shares the report from The Atlantic: [Dolen] and her colleague Eric Edsinger put five Californian two-spot octopuses individually into the middle of three connected chambers and gave them free rein to explore. One of the adjacent chambers housed a second octopus, confined inside an overturned plastic basket. The other contained an unfamiliar object, such as a plastic flower or a Chewbacca figurine. Dolen and Edsinger measured how long the main animal spent in the company of its peer, and how long with the random toy. The free-moving individuals thoroughly explored the chambers, and from their movements, Dolen realized that individuals of any sex gravitate toward females, but avoid males. Next, she dosed the animals with ecstasy. Again, there's no precedent for this, but researchers often anesthetize octopuses by dunking them in ethanol -- a humane procedure with no lasting side effects. So Dolen and Edsinger submerged their octopuses in an MDMA solution, allowing them to absorb the drug through their gills. At first they used too high a dose, and the animals "freaked out and did all these color changes," Dolen says. But once the team found a more suitable dose, the animals behaved more calmly -- and more sociably. "With ecstasy in their system, the five octopuses spent far more time in the company of the same trapped male they once shunned," the report continues. "Even without a stopwatch, the change was obvious. Before the drug, they explored the chamber with the other octopus very tentatively."
"They mashed themselves against one wall, very slowly extended one arm, touched the [other animal], and went back to the other side," Dolen says. "But when they had MDMA, they had this very relaxed posture. They floated around, they wrapped their arms around the chamber, and they interacted with the other octopus in a much more fluid and generous way. They even exposed their [underside], where their mouth is, which is not something octopuses usually do."
"They mashed themselves against one wall, very slowly extended one arm, touched the [other animal], and went back to the other side," Dolen says. "But when they had MDMA, they had this very relaxed posture. They floated around, they wrapped their arms around the chamber, and they interacted with the other octopus in a much more fluid and generous way. They even exposed their [underside], where their mouth is, which is not something octopuses usually do."
> "They even exposed their [underside], where their mouth is, which is not something octopuses usually do."
Now *this* is what I consider worthwhile research.
Ezekiel 23:20
Usually it's towards the end of the evening and I am spilling drinks on myself.
The real question... does ecstasy make octopuses feel extra loving toward researchers? Just think of the possibilities.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
philosophically anyway. It lends credence to the idea that social behaviors can be traced back to certain chemical responses. The reason that matters is stuff like religion and the origin of morality. There's a pretty big debate on, for example, whether you can have morality without God. This is a notch on the atheist's side since it implies socializing might have a generalized chemical factor to it.
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They clearly need to try LSD next.
We need to be careful here not to infer that the rolling subject octopuses are spending more time with the contained male because they want to interact socially. We don't know how sober octopuses think, so it is terribly wrong to assume that high ones are not just out of their minds with no idea what they are really doing. We do know what different dosages of MDMA tend to do to humans, though there is still variability there, while we know nothing about the octopus MDMA response curve. It appears that MDMA does make them behave abnormally but it is impossible thus far to draw any conclusions about octopus motivations, and probably wrong to apply human concepts of mood and socialization. The octopuses exposing their undersides and doing flips and whatnot might indicate that they've lost their shit, more so than that they feel all warm and fuzzy and want to cuddle.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Lettvin
> is that Exodus and Moses are Canon
*facepalm*
The Torah is NOT a history book. Take Genesis: It has the lie of omission about Adam's first wife, has contradictory creation stories (Man is created _after_ the animals in chapter 1, but _before_ the animals in chapter 2), has the nonsense of day & night existing BEFORE the sun was made, chapter 4:4 shows that there were humans BEFORE Adam, etc. In Exodus we find nine of the ten commandments come directly out of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The only ones treating Moses as canon are those ignorant of history.
It is obvious you've never read it, let alone understand the allegory of it.
e.g. Why is Day 2 of the creation is the ONLY day that doesn't say "It was good."