Bad influences

It's been far too long since we called attention to substance abuse in the animal kingdom. Setting a particularly bad example is a chimp in China with a smoking habit. Yes, he died recently, but:

Zoo spokesman Qondile Khedama said Charlie had become an institution, entertaining thousands of visitors every year with his antics.

For years, zookeepers had been trying to get the chimp to kick the habit, and they discouraged visitors from giving him cigarettes.

But Mr Khedama said he did not believe the addiction had ended Charlie's life prematurely, as he had lived around 10 years longer than the average chimp.

And in Austria, some zoo rhinos were directly responsible for enabling one man's drug habit:

An Austrian zoo has fired a zookeeper after discovering that he had been secretly growing a cannabis plantation in the rhinoceros enclosure he was in charge of. It was a clever scheme because the 59-year-old man had exclusive access to the enclosure at Salzburg Zoo, and the presence of the notoriously irritable one-ton beasts was likely to deter the curious.

But perhaps the most disturbing case reported recently is that of a deer at a resort in China. A few months ago, a waitress offered the animal a taste of some beer, and it was the first step on a descent into alcoholism:

Since then, says Zhang, whenever there is any leftover beer she takes it to feed to the deer.

"It has a growing addiction to beer. To begin with it was half a bottle but now it is several big bottles in a row. Her daily feed is around two bottles of beer."

Zhang adds: "I don't know what her maximum appetite for beers is though we once tried giving her four bottles of beer and she drank them all."

Elsewhere the restaurant's chef is quoted:

"It drinks beer quite often. It does not drink water any more, it only drinks beer."

Some say that drug abusers hurt only themselves, but when people foolishly believe that animals are cute and noble, we run the risk of their behavior being used as a role model, especially by innocent youth. What are our children to think when they see Bambi guzzling beer?

Bad Animals and Bad Guys

There is no honor among thieves, it is said. And bad guys can't count on bad animals, as drug dealers in widely dispersed parts of the world discovered recently. Luckily for the law-abiding among us, it's hard to know exactly how much to feed your animal employees to ensure their loyalty:

-In Canada, overfeeding bears with the munchies proved to be a bad strategy:

A pair of marijuana growers in Western Canada appear to have been using bears to protect their illegal crop, but the well-fed animals proved to be a bit lax in their guard duties, police said on Wednesday...

Officers were initially worried the bears might be dangerous, but quickly realized the animals were actually very docile and content just to sit around as the marijuana was seized, police said in a news release.

-And in Italy, going too far in the other direction backfired:

Police raiding a drug den in the Italian capital have been confronted by an aggressive albino python which was used to intimidate addicts.

Police had been tipped off that they would find "an animal" during the raid on the apartment in the centre of Rome, and when they opened the door they saw a striped yellow and white snake curled up on a heat mat.

The snake, which was three metres long and was kept hungry so that it would be more aggressive, was allowed to roam the apartment to scare addicts into paying for their drugs, police said.

Animal services were called to capture the snake, which was tempted into captivity using a whole chicken and sent to a nearby zoo.

Albino python with no known connection to the drug trade by Flickr user Tambako the Jaguar.

Updates: Animals behaving humanly

We reported recently on a cat that took the ferry to Spain from England. Concern that this was a symptom of a bigger problem was confirmed by our crack bad behavior research team, which dug up two stories about dogs that take the subway in Moscow. One, in the Financial Times, quotes extensively from a biologist that studies the packs of stray dogs living in the city:

Neuronov says there are some 500 strays that live in the metro stations, especially during the colder months, but only about 20 have learned how to ride the trains. This happened gradually, first as a way to broaden their territory. Later, it became a way of life. “Why should they go by foot if they can move around by public transport?” he asks.

Regular readers of this blog won't be surprised that these strays have their human enablers:

The metro dog also has uncannily good instincts about people, happily greeting kindly passers by, but slinking down the furthest escalator to avoid the intolerant older women who oversee the metro’s electronic turnstiles. “Right outside this metro,” says Neuronov, gesturing toward Frunzenskaya station, a short distance from the park where we were speaking, “a black dog sleeps on a mat. He’s called Malish. And this is what I saw one day: a bowl of freshly ground beef set before him, and slowly, and ever so lazily, he scooped it up with his tongue while lying down.”

Dogs aren't the only lazy animals who've gotten the idea that human transportation is a good deal. We've previously seen a bird trying to hitch a ride on a plane, and now there's also this video of a pigeon taking the subway in Toronto.

These animals might be interested to know what happened to a cat in England who took the same bus every day for four years: he was killed by a hit and run driver while crossing the road to get to the bus stop. His owner was quoted in the Daily Mail:

She said: 'Casper was quite quick for his age but I was trying to stop him from riding the bus so much.

'He had no road sense whatsoever but he loved people.

'He'd queue up in line good as gold - it'd be 'person, person, person, cat, person, person'.'

Sad, but instructive. As we humans well know, taking advantage of our transportation technology has its downsides. Maybe animals - who can already run, climb, swim and fly better than we can - should stick to what they're good at.

Moving on: this video from Japan, always on the forefront of treating animals humanly, shows a family that sends its pet penguin to the grocery store on its own. We have to grant that at least this penguin is pulling its weight in the household more than most animals do.

The Japanese are probably also not helping matters by believing that some of their cats can actually speak.

A final quick addition to a topic we have been following: add cigarettes and coffee to the list of substances that bees like to abuse, which already included bees alcohol and cocaine. Scientists in Israel found that they also prefer nectar that is spiked with caffeine and nicotine.


Dog on the Moscow metro by Flickr user Adam Baker.

Marsupial drug fiends

And if that isn't bad enough... they play hoaxes on innocent believers in the supernatural, AND persuade innocent livestock to follow their lead.

BBC - Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around "as high as a kite", a government official has said.

Lara Giddings, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania, said the kangaroo-like marsupials were getting into poppy fields grown for medicine...

"We have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," Lara Giddings told the hearing.

"Then they crash," she added. "We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high."

Rick Rockliff, a spokesman for poppy producer Tasmanian Alkaloids, said the wallaby incursions were not very common, but other animals had also been spotted in the poppy fields acting unusually.

"There have been many stories about sheep that have eaten some of the poppies after harvesting and they all walk around in circles," he added.

Kangaroo on drugs by Flickr user mrmanc

Boozing bees, part 2: "Not even a college student."

In our last post, we saw the effects of lab-induced drug abuse in bees, which were oddly reminiscent of the effects in humans. But how is that behavior the fault of the bees, you may ask?

Well, they may only get cocaine in labs. But in nature, alcohol is actually their drug of choice.

According to an artice in New Scientist ("Driven to Drink: A Sorry Tale of Bees' Boozy Life," August 8, 1992, p. 14), honey bees drinking fermented nectar have more flying accidents, die younger and are often rejected by teetotalers back at the hive. An Australian entomologist, Dr. Errol Hassan, is looking at bees imbibing both fermented sugar syrup and nectar. The alcohol content can be as high as 10% in these materials and adding fermented syrup or nectar to honey can make it "spiked."

The observation that bees are attracted to alcohol on their own goes back many years, as in this article from the New York Times of Dec 26 1898

The bee, like its human brother, is a frail and temptable creature, whose usefulness depends on absolute abstemiousness... According the credible accounts, the Cuban honey bee, to some extent, has fallen a victim to strong drink. The "workers" find it much nicer to congregate around the sugar mills, where they are always sure to discover sweet juices in ample supply. At first the bees carry on their labors diligently. Then, little by little, they learn that juices from the sugar cane contain alcohol...

Forsaking even the semblance of work, the bees imbibe the intoxicating fluid, and thenceforth the social and mental decline is marked. The sad fact is that the bees get drunk. They fly about in a dazed and listless condition, ambitionless so far as honey making is concerned. Once they have drunk from the fountain of Bacchus, they are moral and physical degenerates.

So researchers are merely taking advantage of their natural tendencies, which they say is exceedingly easy:

Most animals have to be tricked into drinking alcohol, says Charles Abramson of Ohio State University. But a honeybee will happily drink the equivalent of a human downing 10 litres of wine at one sitting.

"We can get them to drink pure ethanol, and I know of no organism that drinks pure ethanol - not even a college student," he says.

But don't try this at home - remember, these are trained professionals. Don't mess with bees!

Substance abusing bees, part 1

Recent research shows that honey bees that are given cocaine dance more - which may not be surprising - but there's more to it than it sounds at first, because remember that for bees, dancing isn't about partying, it's about communication:

ScienceDaily (Dec. 25, 2008) — In a study that challenges current ideas about the insect brain, researchers have found that honey bees on cocaine tend to exaggerate.

Normally, foraging honey bees alert their comrades to potential food sources only when they've found high quality nectar or pollen, and only when the hive is in need. They do this by performing a dance, called a "round" or "waggle" dance, on a specialized "dance floor" in the hive. The dance gives specific instructions that help the other bees find the food.

Foraging honey bees on cocaine are more likely to dance, regardless of the quality of the food they've found or the status of the hive, the authors of the study report.

(Click here for a less restrained look into the mind of bees on coke, from this week's New Yorker.)

Bees have also been used to study the effects of alcohol, and the effect likewise sound awfully familiar.

"Alcohol affects bees and humans in similar ways – it impairs motor functioning along with learning and memory processing," said Julie Mustard, a study co-author and a postdoctoral researcher in entomology at Ohio State University.

Researchers gave honey bees various levels of ethanol, the intoxicating agent in liquor, and monitored the ensuing behavioral effects of the drink – specifically how much time the bees spent flying, walking, standing still, grooming and flat on their backs, so drunk they couldn't stand up.

...Not surprisingly, increasing ethanol consumption meant bees spent less time flying, walking and grooming, and more time upside down.

You might say that this doesn't count as bad behavior, because it wasn't the bees' choice to imbibe... but come back on Friday.

Partying bee by Flickr user Henrique Vicente.

Stoned locusts: like just being a plague isn't enough

Locusts, high on serotonin, succumb to peer pressure, attack in disguise.

BBC - Desert locusts are known to swarm by the billions, inflicting severe hardship on farmers in parts of Africa, China and other areas.

But the insects actually spend much of their life in a harmless, "solitary" phase.

When food runs short, they slowly become clustered together and enter their "gregarious" phase, culminating in an aggressive swarm.

Prior to swarming, the locusts undergo a series of dramatic physical changes - their body colour darkens and their muscles grow stronger...

(Scientists) triggered the gregarious behaviour by tickling the beasts' hind legs, to simulate the jostling they experience in a crowd.

They found that locusts behaving the most gregariously (in swarm-mode) had approximately three times more serotonin in their systems than their calm, solitary comrades...

"Serotonin profoundly influences how we humans behave and interact," said co-author Dr Swidbert Ott, from Cambridge University.

"So to find that the same chemical is what causes a normally shy, antisocial insect to gang up in huge groups is amazing."

It's a familiar story. "They were so quiet. Kept to themselves," shocked neighbors say...

(Photo from Wikimedia user ChriKo .)