The Sonoran Desert toad can alter your mind — it’s not the only animal.

[expat500]

The adage “all attention is good attention” may be true for marketers — not so for the Sonoran Desert toad. Last fall, the U.S. National Park Service sent out a message on Facebook asking visitors to “refrain from licking” the toad (technically Incilius alvarius but commonly called Bufo alvarius). That message came months after a New York Times article covered the booming interest in the psychedelic compound that the toad excretes from its skin — along with the “poaching, over-harvesting and illegal trafficking” that have accompanied that interest.

People don’t typically lick the toads to get high, says Robert Villa, a community outreach specialist at the University of Arizona’s Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill. The secretions the toads produce are toxic when ingested. They “work orally, through the mucous membranes, and cause really dangerous side effects, like cardiac arrest,” Villa says.

Instead, for decades, people have been collecting the secretions, then drying and smoking them. When inhaled, a compound within, 5-MeO-DMT, can cause auditory and visual hallucinations. “It’s a very powerful psychedelic sometimes called the ‘God molecule,’ ” says pharmacologist and chemist David Nichols of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.

The drug’s growing popularity could be bad news for toad populations. “If you relocate it outside of its home territory,” Villa says, which often happens when people collect a toad for its secretions, “it gets lost and its chances for survival go way down.” What’s more, collecting large numbers of toads increases the risk of disease transmission, like chytrid fungus, between toads.

The Sonoran Desert toad can alter your mind — it’s not the only animal

Their psychedelic and other potentially mind-bending compounds didn't evolve to give people a trip.

www.sciencenews.org

 

[BULLDOG]

I never licked a frog, but I have kissed a few really ugly women.

 

[expat500]

I never licked a frog, but I have kissed a few really ugly women.

Did you get high on it?

 

[BULLDOG]

Did you get high on it?

I've done worse.

 

[scruffy]

Bufotenin is not my idea of a good time.

I've tried 5-methoxy-DMT too, it makes you feel like an elephant's sitting on you for about 5 minutes, before the electric effects kick in.

Mushrooms are plentiful. Avoid the red ones.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

The adage “all attention is good attention” may be true for marketers — not so for the Sonoran Desert toad. Last fall, the U.S. National Park Service sent out a message on Facebook asking visitors to “refrain from licking” the toad (technically Incilius alvarius but commonly called Bufo alvarius). That message came months after a New York Times article covered the booming interest in the psychedelic compound that the toad excretes from its skin — along with the “poaching, over-harvesting and illegal trafficking” that have accompanied that interest.

People don’t typically lick the toads to get high, says Robert Villa, a community outreach specialist at the University of Arizona’s Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill. The secretions the toads produce are toxic when ingested. They “work orally, through the mucous membranes, and cause really dangerous side effects, like cardiac arrest,” Villa says.

Instead, for decades, people have been collecting the secretions, then drying and smoking them. When inhaled, a compound within, 5-MeO-DMT, can cause auditory and visual hallucinations. “It’s a very powerful psychedelic sometimes called the ‘God molecule,’ ” says pharmacologist and chemist David Nichols of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.

The drug’s growing popularity could be bad news for toad populations. “If you relocate it outside of its home territory,” Villa says, which often happens when people collect a toad for its secretions, “it gets lost and its chances for survival go way down.” What’s more, collecting large numbers of toads increases the risk of disease transmission, like chytrid fungus, between toads.

The Sonoran Desert toad can alter your mind — it’s not the only animal

Their psychedelic and other potentially mind-bending compounds didn't evolve to give people a trip.

www.sciencenews.org

These bastards come out of the ground every monsoon season in my back yard, after the heavy downpours begin. They even swim around my pool sometimes. I wouldn't be worried much but I have two Italian Greyhounds and one is a hunter and if he encounters one of these toads will try to bite and kill it.

He'd possibly die though because the toxin on their skin is some kind of nerve agent and not something easily treated, so I have to patrol my yard after such heavy rain and catch the bastards.