
Octopuses on MDMA reveal genetic evolution link to human social behaviors - dnetesn
https://phys.org/news/2018-09-octopuses-mood-drug-ecstasy-reveal.html
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hashkb
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.

~~~
andreworks
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
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?

~~~
crooked-v
> "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," Ehrlichman said. "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."

~~~
rosser
Interesting that we both posted the same quote within seconds of one another.

~~~
raziel2701
Clearly you're both taking the same drugs!

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kevinmchugh
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
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
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)

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jugg1es
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
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)

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

~~~
cuboidGoat
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
maybe throw in some vicks vapor rub as well

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

~~~
gonesilent
"But I must caution the results are preliminary and need to be replicated and
affirmed in further experiments."

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

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retreatguru
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.

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kenny87
am i only the one that want's to know who their plug was? :-)

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

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hoodwink
Interesting that the title doesn’t use “octopi”

~~~
cuboidGoat
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-
plura...](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/what-are-the-plurals-of-
octopus-hippopotamus-syllabus/)

~~~
mygo
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
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.

