Of Course the Dolphins Found the Good Stuff First

Bottlenose dolphins have figured out something humans took millennia and a lot of bad decisions to discover: the pufferfish—specifically its tetrodotoxin, administered in careful sub-lethal doses—produces a dissociative, floaty high that’s apparently worth the risk of death. They pass the fish around like a joint. Gently. Deliberately. Too much of the toxin kills you, but just a little… you drift. The dolphins drift. Grinning stupidly at the ocean surface, bobbing there with their eyes glazed over.

I find this deeply comforting. The impulse to chemically exit your own head for a while isn’t a human pathology—it’s apparently just what sufficiently intelligent animals do when the ocean gets boring. They’re not doing it by accident. They seek it out. They’ve worked out the dosage. A controlled pharmaceutical experiment conducted by creatures with no opposable thumbs and no regulatory oversight, and they are absolutely killing it.

Our unusual heroes.