MDMA Makes Octopuses Want to Mingle, Too

0ct0pus:

I didn’t write for a while, but this article needed to be shared 🙂

sidenote: MDMA, the active principle in ecstasy, is a drug well known for boosting emotional empathy and prosocial behaviour in humans (and also to boost energy).

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In short, an octopus researcher at the University of Chicago gave some MDMA to a bunch of octopuses and witnessed that the effects were similar to the ones in human. That is, the octopuses showed prosocial behaviours that go against their nature (indeed, octopuses are usually asocial/like to be alone, except when they are trying to mate). 

This is interesting not only because these octopuses don’t normally behave this way, but also because the last common ancestor we shared was probably some wormlike thing between 500 and 750 million years ago […]

These findings might tell us a lot about how “ancient neurotransmitter systems are shared across vertebrate and invertebrate species.”

How fascinating !

MDMA Makes Octopuses Want to Mingle, Too