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.
Yea, this whole study was possible because octopuses don't really like being that close to others. It seems cruel to trap a sober one in a cage with one they got high on drugs who is trying to get all up in the sober one's business.
cuboidGoat|7 years ago
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|7 years ago
muthdra|7 years ago
jugg1es|7 years ago