Some Rivers Are So Drug-Polluted, Their Eels Get High on Cocaine (nationalgeographic.com) 85
Joshua Rapp Learn, reporting for National Geographic: Critically endangered eels hyped up on cocaine could have trouble making a 3,700-mile trip to mate and reproduce -- new research warns. And while societies have long grappled with ways to cope with the use of illicit drugs, less understood are the downstream effects these drugs might have on other species after they enter the aquatic environment through wastewater. So, in the name of research, scientists pushed cocaine on European eels in labs for 50 days in a row, in an effort to monitor the effects of the experience on the fish.
European eels have complex life patterns, spending 15 to 20 years in fresh or brackish water in European waterways before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to spawn in the Sargasso Sea just east of the Caribbean and the U.S. Eastern Seaboard. While the eels are also farmed for food, the wild population is considered critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature due to dams and other waterway changes that block their migrations, overfishing, and different types of water pollution. The eels are vulnerable to trace concentrations of cocaine, particularly in their early lives, according to the researchers of a study published in Science of the Total Environment.
European eels have complex life patterns, spending 15 to 20 years in fresh or brackish water in European waterways before crossing the Atlantic Ocean to spawn in the Sargasso Sea just east of the Caribbean and the U.S. Eastern Seaboard. While the eels are also farmed for food, the wild population is considered critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature due to dams and other waterway changes that block their migrations, overfishing, and different types of water pollution. The eels are vulnerable to trace concentrations of cocaine, particularly in their early lives, according to the researchers of a study published in Science of the Total Environment.
Cocaine (Score:5, Funny)
And the eels were all heard singing...
If you want to hang out, you've gotta take her out, cocaine
If you want to get down, get down on the ground, cocaine
She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie,
Cocaine
If you got that lose, you want to kick them blues, cocaine
When your day is done, and you want to ride on cocaine
She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie,
Cocaine
If your day is gone, and you want to ride on, cocaine
Don't forget this fact, you can't get it back, cocaine
She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie,
Cocaine
She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie,
Cocaine
Re: (Score:2)
Rick James says cocaine is a helluva drug. [youtube.com]
Mick Jagger is fine... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
You mean Keith Richards. How is he still alive!?
Re: (Score:2)
Genes baby...genes.
Aside from the amazing music he's given the world, I sincerely hope he donates his body to science so they can study his DNA and everything else...to see how he just still keeps on processing oxygen.
Although he'll likely still outlive all of us here on /. , I hope future generations can learn from whatever keeps him going....and going....and going.....
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You mean Keith Richards. How is he still alive!?
Cocaine!
Re: (Score:2)
The abstract of the study linked in the National Geographic article says 20ng per litre, and that this is a level found in some rivers.
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't cocaine still really, really expensive?
If so, then WTF is wasting it letting it go down the sink and into the waste water supply?
Re: (Score:2)
No, they don't. Take it from experience. They don't come close to the house until its time to kick the door down, also if they did that it would be a dead give away and would have more chance of a shoot out. I don't know where you got your information from... But I have been in houses that got raided. Also how would this work in apartments where 30+ units get shut off at once, you don't think this would be noticed? Raids use surprise as a safety mechanism.
Re: "Could" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like you could have a hell of a business just distilling the water. Wonder what the easiest way to extract it is. I was thinking the same thing at that level, 2000 liters of water is 20 grams of cocaine, if I'm not mistaken on my math.. Thats about $800 depending on your level of connection.
Re: (Score:2)
Illicit drugs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I'm pretty sure these "scientists" just really wanted to use their grant money to buy cocaine.
I think they just blew it on blow too...
Yes, because we're stupid like that (Score:1)
It'd be much easier in the long term to deal with those substances if we hadn't declared them illegal, so we could instead regulate their production (and distribution, sales, etc.) and demand the producers don't dump their waste on the eels. That magical property vs. all the other substances is precisely and accurately that we've declared them illegal and as a result the wastes of their production don't get passed through wastewater treatment or otherwise get handled with care for the wildlife, like these e
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Illicit drugs? (Score:4)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I'd be more curious of the effects of something like caffeine which I'm sure has become ubiquitous in the waters around developed areas.
Re: (Score:1)
Rx drugs in the water supply has already been studied. It was all the buzz a couple years ago, now they're looking into the impact of illegal drugs too, as it's not necessarily intuitive enough make it to the water supply to matter.
Obligitory Doctor Rockso (Score:2)
"Guguguguguguh-yeeeaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!! I'm Dr. Rockso! The rock 'n roll clown! I do COCAINE!!!"
Re: (Score:2)
Everyone knows (Score:3)
Everyone knows that Eels prefer Crystal Meth to Cocaine.
Re:Everyone knows (Score:5, Funny)
Everyone knows that Eels prefer Crystal Meth to Cocaine.
Funny, every time I see an eel it's on ice.. I think you are right.
A real problem (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm guessing they're actually doing the same thing that is usually done in popular science when talking about "cocaine in rivers". They're talking about benzoylecgonine, which is the metabolic end product of cocaine in human metabolism.
Re: A real problem (Score:4, Funny)
I'm guessing they're actually doing the same thing that is usually done in popular science when talking about "cocaine in rivers". They're talking about benzoylecgonine, which is the metabolic end product of cocaine in human metabolism.
So you're saying that the researchers didn't give cocaine to the eels; rather, they snorted all the cocaine, then pissed into an aquarium full of eels?
Re: (Score:2)
Or they actually used cocaine on eels to get a great abstract that sounds sensational, but makes their study utterly pointless for real life.
Or eels in question actually have a metabolic reaction to the aforementioned end product of human metabolizing cocaine.
Re: (Score:1)
From the abstract
"The skeletal muscle of silver eels exposed to 20ngL1 of cocaine for 50days were compared to control, vehicle control and two post-exposure recovery groups (3 and 10days after interruption of cocaine)"
Further down the abstract
"Cocaine-exposed eels appeared hyperactive but they showed the same general health status as the other groups. In contrast, their skeletal muscle showed evidence of serious injury, including muscle breakdown and swelling, similar to that typical of rhabdomyolysis. Thes
Re: (Score:2)
So the first scenario is true. Thanks for doing the legwork on the abstract.
Are the Eels complaining? (Score:2)
I think not.. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming....
If it's a problem, stop letting dealers and users flush their stash during arrest proceedings by always breaching though the bathroom walls.
(sarc: off)
Re: (Score:2)
Just let the coke heads know it's being excreted unmetabolized and they will drink their own pee.
Tweaks in jail fight to drink the pee of recently arrested tweakers.
Don't even start on psychedelic guru pee, fucking hippies.
Re: (Score:2)
My hovercraft is full of eels.
Re: (Score:2)
My hovercraft is full of eels.
I thought hovercraft didn't have wh eels...
Ridin that wave... (Score:1)
High on Cocaine...
HT: Jerry Garcia
Are you sure it's the eels that need help? (Score:2)
Yeah, that's totally a sensical thing to do -- definitely no research assistants cut into the stash at all. Nope.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, that's totally a sensical thing to do -- definitely no research assistants cut into the stash at all. Nope.
I'm sure you said it in jest, but in case not: the bio labs at my undergrad university had some ongoing experiments involving cocaine and I talked to some of the researchers about it. There was sooo much bureaucracy and procedure they had follow with the "stash". Basically every fleck of the stuff had to be accounted for at all times.
cool (Score:1)
hopefully, now that society is accepting medical and recreational marijuana, cocaine is next.
Just like marijuana ("marihuana") was demonized for it's association with Mexicans, cocaine was demonized for it's association with blacks. (Specifically, the fear that black men would snort a line of cocaine and then rape your wife or daughter).
Meanwhile, bored housewives, business executives, etc had been using low doses of cocaine for years without problems. To this day, many slashdot readers, tech workers
Re: (Score:2)
It's time to legalize it, but that's because the alternatives (untested analogs) are worse and impossible to control.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Q: Why would you flush perfectly good drugs down the toilet? A: Because the fuzz is kicking in your door!
Drugs belong in our bodies, not in our toilets. Legalize cocaine. For the environment.
Re: (Score:2)
We already had that stage when it was legal. Wikipedia page for cocaine has amazing ads from late 1800s and early 1900s for cocaine.
It was utterly devastating for communities, because unlike marijuana, cocaine is actually extremely addictive for overwhelming majority of people and directly overrides one of our primary motivational systems.
Re: (Score:2)
It is. That's why heroin was used in the past to literally bring China to its knees.
Re: (Score:2)
That was opium, far less addictive than morphine, let alone heroin, that you are thinking of.
BTW, back to the topic, cocaine is legal for medical uses; it used to be the anesthetic of choice for eye surgery. Legalizing it for "headaches" or similar minor ills (let alone recreational uses) will bring back all the problems that were noted in 1890s to 1900s.
Re: (Score:2)
You didn't read the argument. Also, opium in purities available at the time is far less addictive than modern cocaine.
Finally, opium is also legal for medical uses. Morphine for example is a common pain relief of last resort.
Re: (Score:2)
And you didn't read, either.
The wars that supposedly brought China to its knees were called the *Opium* Wars, partially because heroin hadn't been invented, yet (and probably not morphine, but I'd have to look up too much).
Cocaine IS legal in certain uses, such as eye surgery, just not for general uses, let alone recreational use.
Re: (Score:2)
Both your arguments are wrong in the context of this discussion, on the merits you're presenting them. Read my previous post and its points, instead of just reposting flawed arguments that already have been debunked.
For Eels (Score:2)
Let The Good Times Roll......Eel Guitar Solo.........
the chemtrails nobody is talking about (Score:1)
That explains it (Score:1)
I thought our daily catch looked a bit too upbeat. [attackofthecute.com]
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:1)
Tell me that giving cocaine to a bunch swimming fangs doesn't sound like a B monster movie.
That explains it ! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
brackish water (Score:2)
Where are they going to encounter cocaine? (Score:2)
There's only two things in the Sargasso (Score:2)