Scientists gave a bunch of octopus ecstasy and they started acting like humans – BGR

You can not imagine that you have a lot in common with an octopus. Humans and octopuses are certainly not alike, and their brains are far from being something that is found in all mammals, but a recent study reveals that we could look like eight-legged aquatic invertebrates and was a party drug to make us understand.

The research, led by Dr. Gül Dölen of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is groundbreaking and quite strange. The scientists gave the MDMA octopuses, also known as "ecstasy", the reaction of these people and ended up doing exactly the same things as humans.

First, several male and female octopuses were bathed in water containing MDMA. The animals absorbed it for half an hour and were then placed in a kind of multi-room room. Some rooms in the room were empty, but one of them contained a male octopus (sober) in a cage. It's where things get really strange.

When sober octopuses were placed in this test chamber, they generally sought to avoid the lone male in the cage. They ignored or avoided contact with the other octopus and simply sat around him, while being squishy and all. But when the "high" octopuses were dropped into the chamber, they actively sought physical contact with the caged male.

"It's not only quantitative, but qualitative," said Dölen in a statement. "They tended to hug the cage and put their mouths in the cage. This is very similar to how humans react to MDMA; they touch each other frequently.

The "love drug" seemed to act on the brain of invertebrates in the same way as the human brain. These "prosocial" behaviors were incredibly obvious in the experiments and the research could help open new perspectives to understand how animals socialize and inhibit or promote the delicate behaviors in the animal kingdom. The study was published in Current Biology.