10 ms·

Octopuses on MDMA reveal genetic evolution link to human social behaviors

125 points by dnetesn 8y ago

iliketosleep 8y ago
Full study: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)30991-6 https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)...
zeroname 8y ago
Lobsters on anti-depressants, octopuses on MDMA, sea urchins on DMT... how many more sea dwelling creatures must be drugged in the name of science until the social constructivists finally admit defeat?
- danharaj 8y ago
  What?
maitland 8y ago
Presumably one octopus must be caged in order to prevent them from harming one another.
- cuboidGoat 8y ago
  It says so; Dölen designed an experiment with three connected water chambers: one empty, one with a plastic action figure under a cage and one with a female or male laboratory-bred octopus under a cage. Four male and female octopuses were exposed to MDMA by putting them into a beaker containing a liquefied version of the drug, which is absorbed by the octopuses through their gills. Then, they were placed in the experimental chambers for 30 minutes. All four tended to spend more time in the chamber where a male octopus was caged than the other two chambers. "It's not just quantitatively more time, but qualitative. They tended to hug the cage and put their mouth parts on the cage," says Dölen. "This is very similar to how humans react to MDMA; they touch each other frequently." Under normal conditions, without MDMA, five male and female octopuses avoided only male, caged octopuses. Personally, I think they should extend the experiment to see what effect a stack of underwater transducers emitting a structured arrangement of audio signals combined with rapidly changing patterns of lighting, would have on the octopus behaviour.
  - make3 8y ago
    maybe throw in some vicks vapor rub as well
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - muthdra 8y ago
    This is how hentai is created.
    - cuboidGoat 8y ago
      Should a scientist accidentally fall into the mdma infused tank full of octupuses, I think the damage to their academic career could be substantial due to these kinds of childish attitudes. And that is the only reason all of the security footage is being encrypted and streamed to an offsite technology partner.
- jugg1es 8y ago
  Yea, this whole study was possible because octopuses don't really like being that close to others. It seems cruel to trap a sober one in a cage with one they got high on drugs who is trying to get all up in the sober one's business.
hoodwink 8y ago
Interesting that the title doesn’t use “octopi”
- cuboidGoat 8y ago
  Probably the least interesting part of the entire article, but if you want to go there - "Although it is often supposed that octopi is the ‘correct’ plural of octopus, and it has been in use for longer than the usual Anglicized plural octopuses, it in fact originates as an error. Octopus is not a simple Latin word of the second declension, but a Latinized form of the Greek word oktopous, and its ‘correct’ plural would logically be octopodes." https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/what-are-the-plurals-of-octopus-hippopotamus-syllabus/ https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/what-are-the-plura...
  - singularity2001 8y ago
    octopodes such a beautiful plural, hope it spreads.
  - mygo 8y ago
    octopodes. so misunderstood. but in all seriousness, language is a social construct. If someone says “octopuses” and everyone understands that they mean “more than one octopus”, then the communication was successful. And if enough people use it, then we’re looking at a successful new word. For better or worse.
    - cuboidGoat 8y ago
      Also, we are writing modern english, not ancient latin or greek, so the anglicanised form is fine anyway, as it isn't a sudden neologism looking to find widespread use. Rather it is the common natural pluralisation of octopus in english.
  - amelius 8y ago
    Now this makes me wonder what is the singular form of octopedes ... octopes? ;) (From Latin pes -> pedes)
kevinmchugh 8y ago
I'm curious, and haven't seen it mentioned, how mdma affected the octopus's color-changing and signaling abilities. It causes human eyes to dilate, but octopuses don't use their eyes for color-changing (many are color-blind). I don't know if there'd be a biochemical change that limited the octopus' ability to change color or a psychological change that changed the octopus's desired signaling. Could be both! Edit: there's a note about the dosing, in the "pharmacology" section. It indicates that higher doses produce unusual skin patterns.
- stevenwoo 8y ago
  IIRC there was a study on octopuses which blinded newborns and the blinded newborns could not change their color/patterns to match their background, the blind octopuses did what appeared to be random color/patterns so they do need their eyes for something in the process even if its just training. Also the recent Atlantic article talked about too high a MDMA does caused the colors/patterns to go haywire.
  - platz 8y ago
    they may not be color blind after all Spectral discrimination in color blind animals via chromatic aberration and pupil shape http://www.pnas.org/content/113/29/8206.full http://www.pnas.org/content/113/29/8206.full Weird pupils let octopuses see their colorful gardens https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13084534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13084534
kenny87 8y ago
am i only the one that want's to know who their plug was? :-)
- acct1771 8y ago
  The only time I'd use that class of drug, is if it was from a lab, verified like that.
hashkb 8y ago
Remember, before they hit the street and became politicized, many drugs (MDMA, LSD, and a variety of other psychoactives) were produced by major pharmaceutical companies and used by therapists at major universities. There is no legitimate reason for that research to have ever stopped. In humans.
- cuboidGoat 8y ago
  Of course there is a legitimate reason. All the fun drugs were made by the devil to encourage dancing and the wearing of bright colours. And we all know where that leads.
- andreworks 8y ago
  It could as easily be said: before they hit the street and became politicized, many drugs like Cocaine and Heroin were used in over the counter medicine and even consumer products like Coca Cola to treat a variety of ailments. I'm not saying we shouldn't be researching these chemical's potential benefits to humanity now, but it's not like these drugs were clamped down on for no good reason. We saw what many of these drugs were doing to society, completely banned them to try and counter that, including Universities in the process, and over time we've begun to develop an understanding and different perspective on these drugs, and now the pendulum starts to swing in the opposite direction.
  - vibrato 8y ago
    Is that what we did? Or did we notice brown and black people using drugs and decide that was the reason to put them in jail?
    - rosser 8y ago
      "You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." — John Erlichman, domestic policy advisor to Richard M. Nixon
danschumann 8y ago
"What do you do for a living?" "I help octopi be more social"
- gonesilent 8y ago
  "But I must caution the results are preliminary and need to be replicated and affirmed in further experiments."
- 1337biz 8y ago
  Whew, luckily it is about octopi. Lobsters would make this a lot more controversial.
- nunb 8y ago
  interestingly, the plural is apparently octopodes or octopuses [1] [1] http://grammarist.com/usage/octopi-octopuses/ http://grammarist.com/usage/octopi-octopuses/
jugg1es 8y ago
I don't understand how they can say this shows an evolutionary link between human and octopuses at the neuronal level and not something that evolved independently in both genetic lines. How did they eliminate the possibility of convergent evolution? It doesn't seem reasonable they exclude convergence as a possibility.
- poizan42 8y ago
  I was thinking the same thing. Our last common ancestor might have been something like [0] (the sister clade to Nephrozoa which is the latest common clade between us and octopuses). They just have sortof a nerve-net spread out over their body, nothing like a brain. The nerotransmitters affected existed before the split, but anything complex like social behavior affected by them seems like it must have been the result of convergent evolution. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenacoelomorpha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenacoelomorpha
lngnmn1 8y ago
Oh, really? Genetic evolution link between two branches of an acyclic graph! Peer-reviewed, of course.
retreatguru 8y ago
It would be fascinating to test the behaviour of two male octopus on MDMA. Will they fight or connect? I’d love to see a video of the difference in behaviour.

125 points by dnetesn 8y ago

Full study: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)30991-6 https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)...

zeroname 8y ago

Lobsters on anti-depressants, octopuses on MDMA, sea urchins on DMT... how many more sea dwelling creatures must be drugged in the name of science until the social constructivists finally admit defeat?

danharaj 8y ago
What?

maitland 8y ago

Presumably one octopus must be caged in order to prevent them from harming one another.

cuboidGoat 8y ago
It says so; Dölen designed an experiment with three connected water chambers: one empty, one with a plastic action figure under a cage and one with a female or male laboratory-bred octopus under a cage. Four male and female octopuses were exposed to MDMA by putting them into a beaker containing a liquefied version of the drug, which is absorbed by the octopuses through their gills. Then, they were placed in the experimental chambers for 30 minutes. All four tended to spend more time in the chamber where a male octopus was caged than the other two chambers. "It's not just quantitatively more time, but qualitative. They tended to hug the cage and put their mouth parts on the cage," says Dölen. "This is very similar to how humans react to MDMA; they touch each other frequently." Under normal conditions, without MDMA, five male and female octopuses avoided only male, caged octopuses. Personally, I think they should extend the experiment to see what effect a stack of underwater transducers emitting a structured arrangement of audio signals combined with rapidly changing patterns of lighting, would have on the octopus behaviour.
- make3 8y ago
  maybe throw in some vicks vapor rub as well
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- muthdra 8y ago
  This is how hentai is created.
  - cuboidGoat 8y ago
    Should a scientist accidentally fall into the mdma infused tank full of octupuses, I think the damage to their academic career could be substantial due to these kinds of childish attitudes. And that is the only reason all of the security footage is being encrypted and streamed to an offsite technology partner.
jugg1es 8y ago
Yea, this whole study was possible because octopuses don't really like being that close to others. It seems cruel to trap a sober one in a cage with one they got high on drugs who is trying to get all up in the sober one's business.

hoodwink 8y ago

Interesting that the title doesn’t use “octopi”

cuboidGoat 8y ago
Probably the least interesting part of the entire article, but if you want to go there - "Although it is often supposed that octopi is the ‘correct’ plural of octopus, and it has been in use for longer than the usual Anglicized plural octopuses, it in fact originates as an error. Octopus is not a simple Latin word of the second declension, but a Latinized form of the Greek word oktopous, and its ‘correct’ plural would logically be octopodes." https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/what-are-the-plurals-of-octopus-hippopotamus-syllabus/ https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/what-are-the-plura...
- singularity2001 8y ago
  octopodes such a beautiful plural, hope it spreads.
- mygo 8y ago
  octopodes. so misunderstood. but in all seriousness, language is a social construct. If someone says “octopuses” and everyone understands that they mean “more than one octopus”, then the communication was successful. And if enough people use it, then we’re looking at a successful new word. For better or worse.
  - cuboidGoat 8y ago
    Also, we are writing modern english, not ancient latin or greek, so the anglicanised form is fine anyway, as it isn't a sudden neologism looking to find widespread use. Rather it is the common natural pluralisation of octopus in english.
- amelius 8y ago
  Now this makes me wonder what is the singular form of octopedes ... octopes? ;) (From Latin pes -> pedes)

kevinmchugh 8y ago

I'm curious, and haven't seen it mentioned, how mdma affected the octopus's color-changing and signaling abilities. It causes human eyes to dilate, but octopuses don't use their eyes for color-changing (many are color-blind). I don't know if there'd be a biochemical change that limited the octopus' ability to change color or a psychological change that changed the octopus's desired signaling. Could be both! Edit: there's a note about the dosing, in the "pharmacology" section. It indicates that higher doses produce unusual skin patterns.

stevenwoo 8y ago
IIRC there was a study on octopuses which blinded newborns and the blinded newborns could not change their color/patterns to match their background, the blind octopuses did what appeared to be random color/patterns so they do need their eyes for something in the process even if its just training. Also the recent Atlantic article talked about too high a MDMA does caused the colors/patterns to go haywire.
- platz 8y ago
  they may not be color blind after all Spectral discrimination in color blind animals via chromatic aberration and pupil shape http://www.pnas.org/content/113/29/8206.full http://www.pnas.org/content/113/29/8206.full Weird pupils let octopuses see their colorful gardens https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13084534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13084534

kenny87 8y ago

am i only the one that want's to know who their plug was? :-)

acct1771 8y ago
The only time I'd use that class of drug, is if it was from a lab, verified like that.

hashkb 8y ago

Remember, before they hit the street and became politicized, many drugs (MDMA, LSD, and a variety of other psychoactives) were produced by major pharmaceutical companies and used by therapists at major universities. There is no legitimate reason for that research to have ever stopped. In humans.

cuboidGoat 8y ago
Of course there is a legitimate reason. All the fun drugs were made by the devil to encourage dancing and the wearing of bright colours. And we all know where that leads.
andreworks 8y ago
It could as easily be said: before they hit the street and became politicized, many drugs like Cocaine and Heroin were used in over the counter medicine and even consumer products like Coca Cola to treat a variety of ailments. I'm not saying we shouldn't be researching these chemical's potential benefits to humanity now, but it's not like these drugs were clamped down on for no good reason. We saw what many of these drugs were doing to society, completely banned them to try and counter that, including Universities in the process, and over time we've begun to develop an understanding and different perspective on these drugs, and now the pendulum starts to swing in the opposite direction.
- vibrato 8y ago
  Is that what we did? Or did we notice brown and black people using drugs and decide that was the reason to put them in jail?
  - rosser 8y ago
    "You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." — John Erlichman, domestic policy advisor to Richard M. Nixon

danschumann 8y ago

"What do you do for a living?" "I help octopi be more social"

gonesilent 8y ago
"But I must caution the results are preliminary and need to be replicated and affirmed in further experiments."
1337biz 8y ago
Whew, luckily it is about octopi. Lobsters would make this a lot more controversial.
nunb 8y ago
interestingly, the plural is apparently octopodes or octopuses [1] [1] http://grammarist.com/usage/octopi-octopuses/ http://grammarist.com/usage/octopi-octopuses/

jugg1es 8y ago

I don't understand how they can say this shows an evolutionary link between human and octopuses at the neuronal level and not something that evolved independently in both genetic lines. How did they eliminate the possibility of convergent evolution? It doesn't seem reasonable they exclude convergence as a possibility.

poizan42 8y ago
I was thinking the same thing. Our last common ancestor might have been something like [0] (the sister clade to Nephrozoa which is the latest common clade between us and octopuses). They just have sortof a nerve-net spread out over their body, nothing like a brain. The nerotransmitters affected existed before the split, but anything complex like social behavior affected by them seems like it must have been the result of convergent evolution. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenacoelomorpha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenacoelomorpha

lngnmn1 8y ago

Oh, really? Genetic evolution link between two branches of an acyclic graph! Peer-reviewed, of course.

retreatguru 8y ago

It would be fascinating to test the behaviour of two male octopus on MDMA. Will they fight or connect? I’d love to see a video of the difference in behaviour.