Animals That Enjoy Taking 'Drugs'
Reindeer seek out mushrooms When the snow in Siberia first begins to thaw, reindeer native to the region will hoof up fly agaric mushrooms sitting just below the surface of the snow. The mushrooms are also known to cause visions, and reindeer that eat them often run aimlessly, have random muscle spasms, and make weird noises.
House cats get high on catnip The most obvious and easy-to-spot animal that partakes in hallucinogens is the common house cat, which, as anyone who watches Instagram stories knows, goes absolutely bonkers when it gets around catnip. This is because the chemical in catnip — nepetalactone — mimics female pheromones and drives cats into intense fits of arousal.
Bighorn sheep break their teeth to get lichen In the Canadian Rockies, lichen grows in some of the most inhospitable, hard-to-reach terrain in the region, a.k.a the perfect place for bighorn sheep to climb and get high. The sheep have been known to traverse paths far too risky for humans — or other animals — and find lichen growing on rocks. Some will chip their teeth all the way down trying to scrape lichen off the rock.
Rough-toothed dolphins play with pufferfish We already know that dolphins, cute as we may find them, are completely sadistic when it comes to catching their prey and often toss them around for a while before making them lunch. In small doses its tetrodotoxin can be mildly hallucinogenic, and juvenile rough-tooths pass it around like a spiny, swimming joint to get high.
Red-fronted Lemurs chew on millipedes Though they’re not necessarily using them to get high (or so they tell their parents) Madagascar’s red-fronted lemurs have been observed picking up highly toxic millipedes, rubbing them all over their nether regions, and eventually swallowing them. While primates routinely use insects as a sort of topical ointment to relieve irritations, chewing them is far less common, and Locke says little is known about why lemurs do this.
Jaguars are fond of ayahuasca vines In the same way that people flock to the Amazon for ayahuasca ceremonies with mystical shamans, the jaguars native to the region eat yage (ayahuasca vines) to get a greater understanding of the world around them.
Cows and horses appreciate a little locoweed In the great plains of America’s Midwest, one of the first plants to bloom in the spring is locoweed, a low-growing, high-protein plant with colorful flowers and a deadly phytotoxin. It produces swainsonine, which can cause grazing animals to go into a calm trance where they just kind of stand around doing nothing
Wallabies have a taste for opium Humans are mostly to blame for Australian wallabies’ relatively newfound penchant for poppies. In its rush to become one of the world’s leading producers of legal poppy plants, Australia cleared much of the wallaby’s natural habitat.