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People who take MDMA, a common recreational drug also known as Molly or Ecstasy, experience a feeling of exhilaration and a desire to connect with others. Now, a fascinating new study suggests that this also applies to octopus, despite the fact that we are separated by 500 million years of evolution.
California two-spotted octopus (O. bimaculoides). Credit: Thomas Kleindinst.
MDMA works by increasing the activity of three neurotransmitters in the central nervous system: serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. The emotional and prosocial effects of MDMA are likely caused directly or indirectly by the release of large amounts of serotonin, which influences mood (as well as other functions such as appetite and sleep) . Serotonin also triggers the release of the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin, which play an important role in love, confidence, sexual arousal and other social experiences.
The researchers gave some octopuses a dose of MDMA and then studied their behavior. What they saw surprised them, given the lonely nature of Bimaculoides. People under the influence of drugs spent more time with other octopus, men and women. The most striking behavior, however, was that they engaged in extensive contact with the ventral surface – in other words, they were very delicate. The typical rare the physical contact between the octopuses was non-violent and of a more exploratory nature.
"Despite the anatomical differences between the octopus and the human brain, we have shown that there are molecular similarities in the serotonin transporter gene," Dolen said in a statement. "These molecular similarities are sufficient to allow MDMA to induce prosocial behaviors in octopuses."
These results show that Bimaculoides shares the same serotonin transporter gene with humans, which is known to serve as the main MDMA link site. So, it seems like it's an old neurotransmitter system shared between vertebraerate and invertbrate species that evolved hundreds of millions of years ago.
Of course, the serotonergic system has not evolved to get high creatures but rather to allow for complex social behaviors. For example, the octopus can rely on this common path to behave socially during the breeding season.
In the future, researchers plan to sequence the genomes of two other octopus species, closely related to each other, but with different behaviors. In this way, they hope to better understand the evolution of social behavior.
The results appeared in the journal Current biology
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