Animals That Get High: From Reindeer to Dolphins

Every few months, a video of a deer spinning in an empty field or a bird toppling off a branch goes viral, and the comments fill up with jokes about who left their stash out. The real stories behind those clips are stranger than the jokes, and far less certain.

Animals that get high, or at least look like they do, turn up all over the world, from the forests of Siberia to the farms of Tasmania. Scientists rarely agree that any of them chase a buzz on purpose, and at home, the animal most likely to get high by accident is the family dog.

Key takeaways

• Reindeer in Siberia live alongside the fly agaric mushroom, though it is unclear whether eating it makes them sick and disoriented the way it does people.
• Young dolphins filmed for a BBC series passed a pufferfish between them for 20 to 30 minutes at a time.
• Tasmania's attorney general told lawmakers that wallabies were getting high in the state's poppy fields.
• African elephants may get drunk on fermented marula fruit, but hunger, not pleasure, is the likely reason they eat it.
• Chimpanzees in Guinea were seen drinking fermented palm sap 51 times over 17 years.
• Calls to the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center about pets eating marijuana rose nearly 300% in five years.

Famous cases, from Siberia to Tasmania

Any answer to "Do animals get high?" starts with a caution. No reindeer or wallaby can describe what it feels, so researchers judge from behavior alone, and a stumbling animal may be poisoned, overfed or simply curious. The overlap between animals and psychoactive plants is still wide, because many plants and fungi carry strong chemicals and plenty of animals eat them anyway. Three cases come up again and again.

Reindeer and fly agaric mushrooms

In Siberia, reindeer share habitat with the hallucinogenic mushroom Amanita muscaria, or fly agaric, National Geographic reports. It is the red mushroom with white spots from fairy-tale books, and biologists have watched reindeer eat it. In people, the mushroom brings nausea, vomiting and disorientation. Whether reindeer feel any of that is unclear, the magazine notes, so a reindeer high remains a good story more than a proven fact.

Dolphins and the pufferfish

The most famous case comes from the ocean, and Smithsonian magazine set it up with a reminder that horses eat hallucinogenic weeds, elephants get drunk on overripe fruit and bighorn sheep love narcotic lichen. A film crew working on the BBC series "Spy in the Pod" then recorded young dolphins gently playing with the puffer, the magazine reported, passing the fish between them for 20 to 30 minutes at a time. Pufferfish carry a potent defensive chemical, and in small doses it seemed to put the dolphins in a trance-like state. Some were seen floating just below the surface, apparently mesmerized by their own reflections, and the footage made young dolphins on a pufferfish high a fixture of nature trivia.

Not everyone was convinced. NBC News reported that dolphin researchers had yet to observe intoxicated dolphins in the wild, and the experts it spoke with knew of no study confirming any narcotic effect of the toxin, tetrodotoxin, on a dolphin's nervous system. Diana Reiss of Hunter College pointed out that dolphins are fascinated by their reflections when sober, too, and that the floating dolphins may simply have been coming up to breathe. Jason Bruck, then at the University of Chicago, was more open to the idea and called it very possible.

Wallabies in the poppy fields

Australia supplied one of the best lines on the subject. At a state parliamentary hearing on the security of poppy crops, Tasmania's attorney general, Lara Giddings, described wallabies entering the fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles, The World reported. A poppy farmer, Rick Rockliff, pointed to the seed pods, which contain alkaloids that might be intoxicating the animals, and the hopping got the blame for the crop circles found in the fields.

Barry Wells, an animal welfare officer at the University of Tasmania, was more cautious and noted that the wallabies might simply be acting lethargic. The story spread anyway, and Tasmania's stoned wallabies became a staple of lists of animals that get high.

Drunk on fermented fruit

Fruit starts to ferment as it ripens and rots, which makes alcohol the easiest natural buzz for an animal to stumble into. Stories of wild animals intoxicated by fermented fruit are nothing new, and reports of African elephants getting drunk on marula fruit fill both the popular and the scientific literature, National Geographic notes. Some scientists doubt those reports. A 2020 genetic study led by Mareike Janiak suggests that African elephants' genes may leave them less able to break down alcohol, so they can get drunk from marula fruit, but she adds that they are likely not pleasure-seeking, just hungry.

Birds show the same pattern. Cedar waxwings eat so many berries that a fermented batch can leave them disoriented and slow, and a 2020 study led by Piotr Tryjanowski documented 55 bird species that drink alcohol. Chimpanzees take it further. Wild chimps in Bossou, Guinea, are using their smarts to sip wine, NPR reported, and researchers recorded them drinking fermented raffia palm sap 51 times over 17 years. The chimps fold a leaf into a scoop and dip it into containers that villagers leave at the tops of the palms, though the study shed little light on whether they actually got drunk.

Strains with a wild streak

People, unlike reindeer or wallabies, get to pick their high on purpose, and cannabis breeders have long borrowed names from the animal world and the night sky. Gorilla Z Auto, an autoflowering cross of GG4, Original Z and BF Super Auto #1 at about 25% THC, goes from seed to harvest in 75 to 80 days and brings fruity summer flavors with relaxing, mood-enhancing effects. Northern Lights shares its name with the glow that fills winter skies over reindeer country, and our version, built on Thai landrace and Afghan genetics at 26% THC, finishes flowering in 55 to 60 days with earthy pine and sweet citrus notes. Both lean heavily indica, at 75% and 100%, so they suit a nature documentary on the couch more than a busy morning. Whatever ends up in the jar after harvest, keep it where curious paws cannot reach.

The unexamined day is a wasted opportunity. Reflect on what you did, what you learned, and how you can improve.

John Dewey

Pets and the cannabis stash

The animals most likely to get high in an American home are pets, and almost never by choice. For the first time, recreational drugs made the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center's annual top 10 list of pet toxins for 2022, AVMA News reported, and the center fielded almost 11% more calls about possible marijuana ingestion than the year before. It also reported a nearly 300% increase in calls over the past five years, and the most common cases involved pets eating marijuana-laced baked goods. Dogs dominate the numbers, and in a 2022 study of 251 cannabis poisoning cases, 226 were dogs.

Size matters, since the same edible is a far bigger dose for a small dog than for a person, and it helps to know what happens if a dog eats weed before a pet ever finds a stash. A few simple habits help:

• Store flower, edibles and vape oil in a locked box or a high cabinet, never on a coffee table.
• Keep edibles in their child-resistant packaging until the moment you eat them.
• Drop joint ends, trim and used papers into a trash can with a lid.
• Smoke away from pets, outside or by an open window.
• Tell guests and pet sitters where the stash lives and ask them to keep it closed.

If a pet gets into cannabis anyway, act quickly:

1. Move the pet away and put the rest of the product out of reach.
2. Work out what it ate and roughly how much, and keep the package.
3. Call your vet or an animal poison control line right away and say plainly that cannabis is involved.
4. Keep the pet somewhere quiet and warm, away from stairs and water, while you wait for advice.
5. Skip home remedies, including making the pet vomit, unless a vet tells you to.

Stories from the wild, rules for home

Reindeer, dolphins, wallabies, elephants and birds all have a reputation for getting high, but in most cases, scientists still cannot say whether the animal feels a buzz or simply ate what was in front of it. The clearest cases of animals that get high happen at home, when a curious dog finds an unguarded edible. Enjoy the stories from the wild, and keep the stash locked up.

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