Can Lobsters Get High?
13.07.2024 - 00:34
/ modernfarmer.com
How does one get a lobster high? In a tiny, lobster-sized hotbox, obviously. Or, in scientific terms, a sealed exposure chamber.
A team of scientists at the University of California San Diego have written a paper in pre-print (meaning the work has not been published or peer reviewed yet), which looks at the effects of THC, the main compound in cannabis that gets you high, on lobsters. The team tested variables such as locomotion, meaning how much and how fast the lobsters moved, after they were exposed to THC for up to an hour. They also checked to see what kind of reactions the lobsters had to temperature changes and how much THC was present in the lobster tissue after exposure.
So can lobsters get high? The short answer: sort of.
The drugs did impact the lobsters’ motion and movement, resulting in a lot of slow crustaceans. But it didn’t significantly alter their reactions to heat, like the boiling water that live lobsters are traditionally cooked in.
The scientists devoted their research hours to these questions in response to a 2018 media storm, started by restaurateur Charlotte Gill. At the time, Gill, owner of Charlotte’s Legendary Lobster Pound in Southwest Harbor, Maine, wanted to find a way to cook her lobsters more humanely. She experimented with cannabis smoke (she has a medical marijuana license), using an air mattress pump to inundate the lobsters with vapor and says she noticed immediate changes.
“We looked at tail flips and we also looked at, when we cook the lobster, is there a reaction when you put it into the boiling water? And we were seeing no reaction, or very minimal reaction,” Gill says. “Versus what you see if you don’t have any sedation, which is they’re shooting their claws off. They’re