Animals as junkies..

[ozbreaker]

I just was sent a link to this news article..

http://www.ntnews.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,7034,12290882%5E13569,00.html

Toads turning dogs into junkies
By SUELLEN HINDE
18feb05
Dogs are licking the backs of cane toads to get high from a poison secreted from their glands, a Territory vet has revealed.

And the dogs are becoming addicted to the hallucinogenic cane toad poison -- bufo toxin.

Katherine vet Megan Pickering said yesterday she had seen many cases of dogs affected by the deadly toad poison.

"We have had quite a number of cases of dogs that are getting addicted to the toxin," she said.

"There seems to be dogs that are licking the toxin to get high.

"They lick the toads and only take in a small amount of the poison -- they get a smile on their face and look like they are going to wander off into the sunset."

Cane toads have been in Katherine for three wet seasons.

And dogs, being dogs, have discovered that just a little lick of bufo toxin makes a dog's life shine brighter.

Ms Pickering has treated more than 30 dogs suffering from the deadly effects of bufo toxin at her Katherine Vet Care surgery.

She said there was no doubt after experiencing the effects of cane toad bufo toxin there were some bleary-eyed dogs "going back to have a second go".

"It seems some of them have tasted it in small doses but there are others that have had more toxin and come in fully-fitting.

"But (despite this) they go on to do it again and again -- they seem to have worked it out."

Ms Pickering said the dogs were not developing a tolerance to the toxin but only ingesting small amounts.

"Larger doses would be fatal," she said.

NT Parks and Wildlife get more inquiries about safeguarding pets from the toad than on any other aspect.

They say the answer is to keep dogs and cats inside at night, warn and train them against tackling toads, and best of all keep toads out of your yard.

Ms Pickering said if a dog was suffering from cane toad poisoning -- fitting, running in circles, with bright red gums and/or frothing at the mouth -- wash its mouth out with water as quickly as possible.

I can't help but find this hilarious! But on a more serious note it's interesting to see how many animals go out of their way to 'get fucked up' or 'escape from reality' for a bit including:
* Elephants deliberatly knocking fruit (mangoes??) to the ground and coming back a week later too ingest the fermented fruit.
* Birds at a local brewery here in newcastle used to get 'drunk' from the fruit on the trees growing at the back that were not being picked nnd sitting ther and fermenting.

I've read stories on here of people pets beecoming stoners etc and actively seeking out any lighter type noise in case they might be missing out but animals that do it themselves is very interesting.

I'm sure there's more but i wonder if the psyche of wanting that escape is further spread out in the animal kingdm than i initially thought? I'd heard of animals doing things like this before but the concept of a junkie dogs was just too funny! Its implications in how it afffects our behaviour as well would be interesting too.

I hope this is the right forum for this discussion? or should it be ADD?

 

[anna!]

-> ADD

 

[twippa]

We have rainbow lorikeets that get drunk on the berries straight off the palm trees in our city centre.

Its so funny coz some of them get so drunk they fall out of the trees and stagger around on the ground coz they cant fly!

The trees sound like happy hour at a populer tradesmans pub around sunset every night, they cant get enough!

 

[BongoBongo]

Yes, I'd heard this on ABC radio this morning.

Down boy. Sit...good dog

 

[chugs]

Canines getting caned

If a dog can do this can humans?


Canines get caned
February 18, 2005 - 2:42PM

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Photo: Rick Stevens

Dogs in the Northern Territory are getting "high" on cane toads.

Dogs were licking the backs of the warty pests and becoming addicted to the hallucinogenic poison, a NT vet said today.

Megan Pickering, a vet in Katherine, said she had treated a number of dogs affected by the deadly toad poison.

"We have had quite a number of cases of dogs that are getting addicted to the toxin," Ms Pickering told the Northern Territory News newspaper.

"There seems to be dogs that are licking the toxin to get high.

"They lick the toads and only take in a small amount of the poison - they get a smile on their face and look like they are going to wander off into the sunset."

Katherine, about three hours drive south of Darwin, has been ravaged by the cane toads for about three years.

Cane toads have marched across Australia from Queensland, where they were introduced in the 1930s to kill pests in the cane fields, to northern NSW, and across into the NT.

They have destroyed wildlife in world heritage-listed Kakadu on their relentless march north, and are due to hit Darwin this wet season.

 

[psy_taco]

Bufotonin and 5-meo-DMT. Think the jury is still out on whether Bufotonin is psychoactive (according to erowid), god knows 5-meo-DMT is.

 

[mongman]

Yes, It can be done by humans but I strongly recomend against it. The effects of smoking the venom secreted from a cane toads gland can only be described as VERY intense and almost always comes with a seriously uncomfortable body load (think getting pulled in 4 directions while being squashed flat) this can also point the experience in the wrong dirrection......
The method of ingestion is vaporisation of the dried venom, I dont know of any one who has eaten it.

If you do a search there has been cases of animal addicition to this in the past, posibly with some interesting info/links.

 

[tranzystate]

Newspaper Hype

From 5-Meo-DMT in TIHKAL by Alexander Shulgin.

There are a couple more entries for 5-MeO-DMT, one very important one, and the other quite trivial. There is a drug-use phenomenon that is often referred to by the popular title of "toad-licking." The toad involved is the Sonora Desert Toad, also called the Colorado River Toad, and carries the binomial Bufo alverius. It is not the closely related marine toad Bufo marinus, as some people have insisted, prompted by the early Olmec and Mayan iconography. Of course the licking myth is newspaper hype -- it is the venom that is active, and it is smoked. When the desert toad is stroked near the parotid glands in the neck region, there is the squirting out of this venom and when it is allowed to dry on a hard surface it takes on the texture of rubber cement. It contains up to 15% 5-MeO-DMT, as well as N-methyl-5-methoxytryptamine, 5-MeO-NMT and Bufotenine, which have their own entries.

And here is the trivial entry. I involved myself in a small Australia / toad incident when I recently visited Sydney. There is a consistent historical record of the axiom "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions" in the effort to import solutions to problems that were the unforeseen consequences of earlier imported solutions. I can't remember the decade-by-decade record but as I remember it involved, amongst other things, dogs, rabbits, viruses to control rabbits, and maybe mongooses. And cattle. Cattle had been imported in mid-century as a desired agricultural commodity, but it could not be predicted that their cow-plops would not deteriorate. There were domestic dung beetles, but they appreciated kangaroo droppings (raisin-sized) rather than cow-plops (birthday-cake sized). So the eggs of a cow-oriented dung beetle were brought in about 1970 and, after weathering the usual quarantine, were released into the ecosphere. Another beetle came in without invitation with the importation of agricultural cane. Hitch-hiking along with the cane was a cane beetle, and it had no natural enemies. The beetle proliferated, and as a solution to this infestation there was brought in a "cane toad," the Bufo marinus (the marine toad, not the desert toad, to the eventual disappointment of the drug-oriented subculture) which was believed could provide some control over them. Well, it turned out that the beetles lived at the top of the cane stalks, and the frogs lived at the bottom. The toad didn't eat the beetles, but they did successfully reproduce and multiply, because they, too, had no natural enemies. They are today sweeping across north-eastern Australia.

In the middle of downtown Sydney, right alongside Hyde Park at Williams and College, there is the Australian Museum, with a super library of natural history which I wished to use in the pursuit of the Aborigine use of red beans. And there was a special exhibit on display of the frogs and toads of Australia, with histories, photographs, and occasional sound tracks of croakings. I spotted a panel devoted to the origins and short history of the Bufo marinus. And right in front of it was a little old lady diligently reading the text which said, approximately, that a virus was being developed at some research laboratory in South America, that would be specific for this toad and which would bring the problem under control. I wondered to myself, but just loud enough for her to hear, if this was the same virus that could cause the AIDS syndrome in the Wallaby?

She looked at me for a moment, turned, and walked away. Maybe, just maybe, another rumor of unknown origin has been launched.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the only active ingredient in the venom of the Australian cane toad is Bufotenine (5-Hydroxy-Dimethyl-Tryptamine). As discussed here in TIHKAL this drug is of no recreational value to humans. It would be better described as a convulsive poison rather than a psychedelic drug. From Shulgin's commentary I am lead to believe that no living creature would ever voluntarily consume this chemical, let alone become addicted to it. I would think that the dogs are licking the toads for some other reason than to get high. The media never lets the truth get in the way of a good story. Either that or Bufotenine has a completely different pharmacological effect in dogs than in humans.

The venom of the Bufo alverius which is found in the United States on the other hand contains 5-Methoxy-Dimethyl-Tryptamine which maybe does have some recreational value to some people. I have tried a synthetically produced sample of this chemical and found it to be extremely unpleasant, I'd hate to think how bad Bufotenine would be. The only catch is that this chemical is only active orally, meaning that licking one of these toads would have no effect.

Enough rambling. To sum up I think that this is media hype, and the dogs lick the toads for some other reason to get high. My dog loves to lick everything, from peoples feet, to toilet seats, I'm sure that he doesn't do that to get high.

 

[BigTrancer]

The only catch is that this chemical is only active orally, meaning that licking one of these toads would have no effect.

Eh?

BT

 

[AndyzPsylocybes]

haha gotta love dogs, absolute mad cunts!

 

[TheYellowDart]

I think he means to say that it is NOT active orally.

DMT is orally active when combined with an MAOI, could this also be the case for 5MeO-DMT?

 

[aloowishus]

It is,but by all acounts it's quite(very)dangerous