Salmon exposed to cocaine and its main byproduct roam more widely

https://www.science.org/content/article/cocaine-pollution-gives-salmon-wanderlust

by 1659447091 • 3 months ago

147 89 3 months ago

science.org

zhouzhao2• 3 months ago

If that is not one good argument to start producing cocaine locally, then I don't know!

Save the fish.

HPsquared2• 3 months ago

Roaming more widely may not be healthy for the salmon.

finghin• 3 months ago

I think another study is in order examining how cocaine affects breeding habits.

parodysbird• 3 months ago

Whether it is or is not, is not a function of the cocaine though, but rather idiosyncrasies of the wider ecologies the salmon are in.

If roaming more widely introduces them to more productive food opportunities (or, lower predation) than their closer ecology, then it would be beneficial for them. If it does not, then it wouldn't be. Neither context is determined in the basic finding that cocaine causes them to roam more widely.

grebc• 3 months ago

They’re in a better mood though.

MisterTea3• 3 months ago

Totally. They may wander up bad river, strung out looking for another hit - SNAP! Killed by a bear. My fellow Salmon, please talk to your roe about the dangers of drugs.

kvgr• 3 months ago

What about the rats and turtles in sewers? They might become more agresive!

lynx97• 3 months ago

There is trash 80s "horror" movie waiting to be made.

zhouzhao2• 3 months ago

Gotta give them something to improve their perception of their living conditions!

somenameforme• 3 months ago

Could this not have been simply an instinct to find cleaner waters? I'm surprised they didn't add another control group which injected something unpleasant that could be naturally found in an area, but would be undesirable - ammonia, some sort of acid, or something along those lines.

anthonj• 3 months ago

The title ie a bit misleading:

The study want to prove that cocaine is yet another polluter thar alters the fish behaviour even in the small quantities that can be found in the wild in polluted areas. Not that something is special or different about cocaine pollution.

So the control group in this case are fishes with an implant with no drug at all.

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(26)...

kees99• 3 months ago

Agree with your point overall, but ammonia in particular is a poor example.

Fish lack urea cycle, so they produce and excrete significant amounts of ammonia as part of normal metabolism.

gus_massa• 3 months ago

At very low doses, for example chewing the leaves of coke instead of using the high purified version, it's somewhat like drinking a coffee [1].

I expect the fish to be more active. A coffee patch would be a nice 4th group as another control.

[1] Chewing the leaves of coke is common in many countries of South America, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acullico

randerson• 3 months ago

Coffee can do strange things to animals. There's a study where NASA gave various drugs to spiders to see how it affected their webs[0]. Coffee had a stranger effect on the web than marijuana.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20210327150247/https://arachnidl...

Zigurd• 3 months ago

There's a big data set for cocaine. It comes from wastewater based epidemiology (WBE) studies.

pixelpoet2• 3 months ago

Shine on you crazy salmon

wartywhoa23• 3 months ago

Hahaha, no, wrong substance :)

Salmons get crazy and shine after prolonged walks with Lucy in the sky and some diamonds;

The salmons in question just hanged out with White Stripes.

pixelpoet2• 3 months ago

I mainly couldn't stop myself writing that sequence of words after I'd started :)

throwa356262• 3 months ago

And just like that, smoked Salmon became popular again :)

BTW, did you knew municipalities can easily measure fluctuations in drug usage by testing the sewage water? In fact, sometimes they can see clear differences between different parts of the city.

hmokiguess2• 3 months ago

Is data like that sold anywhere? I wonder if there’s an analytics market for profiling neighborhoods based on sewage water content now. If my browser history wasn’t already rock bottom, that’s a new low for the ad market

tacker2000• 3 months ago

The European Wastewater Surveillance Dashboard:

https://wastewater-observatory.jrc.ec.europa.eu/#/content/th...

Also, Wastewater analysis and drugs — a European multi-city study:

https://www.euda.europa.eu/publications/pods/waste-water-ana...

bjourne3• 3 months ago

Fun fact: if you sign up for many online casinos or betting sites they will indeed use Google Streetview to lookup your house to estimate how much money they might extract from you.

mschuster91• 3 months ago

BTW, did you knew municipalities can easily measure fluctuations in drug usage by testing the sewage water?

Yep. Not just drugs are monitored this way, but also the spread of infectious diseases. That can lead to sometimes pretty weird findings - for example, polio virus is supposed to be extinct, but every so often it shows up in sewage monitoring of major German cities [1]. The cause most likely are people (tourists and immigrants) from Africa and Asia that got an attenuated virus-based vaccination in their home country shortly before they came here.

Covid is, at least in Bavaria, also part of the regular monitoring schedule [2], Austria monitors for Covid, RSV and influenza [3].

[1] https://www.aerzteblatt.de/news/erreger-der-kinderlaehmung-i...

[2] https://bay-voc.lgl.bayern.de/abwassermonitoring

[3] https://abwasser.ages.at/de/

throwpoaster• 3 months ago

We’re looking at you, Vancouver.

api• 3 months ago

Cocaine bear, cocaine shark, cocaine… salmon?

mayhemducks2• 3 months ago

(lowers mirrored glasses).... mother of god

MisterTea3• 3 months ago

Cocaine Salmon is the prequel to Cocaine Bear: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmon#/media/File:Cub_with_tr...

RajT882• 3 months ago

In the southwest there are also meth trout.

DonHopkins3• 3 months ago

Crack Rock Lobster!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4QSYx4wVQg

shrubble• 3 months ago

I learned recently about “Vin Mariani” a wine from the 1860s that was fortified with coca leaves and contained 6mg per liquid ounce of the wine; except for the bottles sold in USA where it was 7.2mg per ounce, because there were other patent medicines that had cocaine in them and the manufacturer added a bit more to be competitive in the market.

The Pope of the time loved the stuff and awarded the company a Vatican medal for it.

sekh60• 3 months ago

While I love the Internet and all sorts of modern life fixtures (in a developed country), I feel a bit like I missed out by not being alive when all the crazy drinks were around.

chuckadams• 3 months ago

Probably best to have missed out on radium water.

Gud• 3 months ago

Cocaine is still readily available.

Pour yourself a nice glass of wine with some coke on the side?

ryanmcbride• 3 months ago

Boy have I got news for you about the availability of drugs in modern days

j_french2• 3 months ago

never knew this was a thing. seems it's still available to buy! sounds like a more respectable version of Buckfast, the tonic wine made in an abbey in Devon that had/has a cult popularity with the youth of parts of Ireland and Scotland

iamacyborg• 3 months ago

Also popular in rave culture

glerk• 3 months ago

Did you actually find a place where you can buy this beverage (the official version)? Asking for a friend of course.

nephihaha• 3 months ago

"Buckie" was supposed to be "auntie's pick me up". It is still a minor political issue in Scotland whenever some hack politician wants to make a name for themselves.

colechristensen• 3 months ago

And John Pemberton produced a clone of Vin Mariani but when alcohol prohibition was passed in Atlanta he produced a non-acoholic version... coca-cola.

bombcar2• 3 months ago

But can you consecrate the cocaine wine‽

jasomill2• 3 months ago

Vinum debet esse naturale de genimine vitis et non corruptum. [1]

IANACL, but I don't see why infusing wine with coca leaves to produce cocaine would be considered any less natural than infusing grape juice with yeast to produce alcohol, and the official Vatican English translation of "corruptum" here is "spoiled", so…maybe?

[1] Codex Iuris Canonici, can. 924 § 3

nico• 3 months ago

This reminded me of Pisco Punch, one of the most popular drinks in San Francisco around the times of the gold rush

Mark Twain wrote about it and apparently really enjoyed the drink. The drink was made with Pisco, pineapple juice and cocaine

Aurornis• 3 months ago

and contained 6mg per liquid ounce of the wine; except for the bottles sold in USA where it was 7.2mg per ounce

Oral bioavailability is lower (around 1/2 to 1/3 if I recall correctly) than nasal use. It also gets spread out over a much longer time because it's absorbed more slowly, which results in lower peak concentrations.

So between the low dose, lower oral bioavailability, slow onset, and lower peak blood concentrations the effects would not have been similar to what we imagine when we think of cocaine users today.

Drugs like this can have very different effects depending on the dose and route of administration. I'm not suggesting that it was a good idea to put this into drinks, but I don't want people getting the wrong idea that anyone drinking this wine in the past was getting the same effects as someone doing a line of cocaine.

In some countries you can get coca leaf tea (mate de coca) which is made from coca leaves and contains small amounts of cocaine, not far from the doses used in this old wine. A lot of tourists are disappointed to discover that it's only mildly stimulating if they feel anything at all, not the intense drug rush associated with taking larger concentrated doses nasally.

windowliker• 3 months ago

Next up: smackhead whales, dolphins on crack, and manatees hitting the bong.

throwaway2037• 3 months ago

I wonder about the root cause. Can it be explained as: (1) Stimulant helps the fish to swim more distance? (2) Inhibition is lowered so the fish is more willing to explore?

mayhemducks2• 3 months ago

Good news everyone! If you give a fish a stimulant, it swims more!

jjk166• 3 months ago

How does one get a job as a "let's give cocaine to this animal and see what happens" scientist?

llbbdd• 3 months ago

Depends on your threshold for credentials and desired pay range. If you've got speed, a stream, and a dream, you can coke up as many fish as you want. It's science as long as you write it down.

jasomill2• 3 months ago

This roughly describes several research projects my late sister-in-law was involved in.

In her case I believe she was friends with the head of a university lab who recruited her out of her PhD program.

yangm97• 3 months ago

Video interview with the Salmon in question https://youtu.be/dDj7DuHVV9E

DonHopkins3• 3 months ago

"What the fuck is that?"

JackFr• 3 months ago

1) Reading the original article as far as I understand, indicates that the dose given the fish is 1000x than is seen in the wild.

2) From a public policy standpoint, OMG, this more than useless. Cocaine is already illegal everywhere.

torvoborvo• 3 months ago

Does more or less cocaine end up in waterways because it is illegal? I would think the amount that ends up in the ocean in relation to failed trafficking may exceed the additional amount from higher usage particularly since not all wastewater is poorly treated and coastal.

adityaathalye• 3 months ago

Based study. https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(26)...

Cringe sciencedotorg coverage... TL;DR: Doped Salmon wild. Wild Salmon dopey.

But a lot more fun in pictures; Spiders on Drugs, courtesy NASA.

Quoted Photos: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/nasa-spiders-drugs-experime...

Source: Using Spider-Web Patterns To Determine Toxicity: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19950065352

stronglikedan2• 3 months ago

Spiders on Drugs

Obligatory: https://youtu.be/sHzdsFiBbFc

chromadon• 3 months ago

Weird, it usually keeps me pretty close to a club toilet.

not_a_bot_4sho• 3 months ago

Maybe I'm walking into a trap here but my experience with cocaine is limited to Scarface and similar movies.

What does it do that keeps you in the restroom frequently?

dsco• 3 months ago

Because you can't do it in public since it's illegal, but club toilets is where people take it.

throwaway888666• 3 months ago

Believe it or not, I am sitting here in botoga in a cafe and drinking coca tea...

perrygeo• 3 months ago

Carter Vail was right. Cocaine was invented by salmon - I bet you didn't know that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX0tVk5T6zc

DonHopkins3• 3 months ago

"Cocaine makes me feel like a new salmon. And he wants some too!"

laxmena• 3 months ago

I have a lot of questions after reading this article

1. How would Cocaine end up in wastewater treatment plant in the first place? 2. What is the volume of Cocaine needed, or used to observe this behavior from the fish? 3. If Cocaine pollution has already been happening in the wild, are there any recorded events that support the claim of effects on the habitat

Salmon exposed to cocaine and its main byproduct roam more widely

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