No monkey business: Great apes spin around to get themselves high - study

Humanity's closest relatives, the great apes, could be more similar to us than we thought: They're even able to get themselves high, according to a new study.

The study sheds light on another shared behavior between humans and some of our closest relatives on the evolutionary tree - gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutans - and the findings were published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Primates.

And yes, it turns out that trying to achieve an altered state of mind may just run in the family.

Stoned since the stone age: A history of humans getting high

Throughout human history, people have always sought ways to achieve an altered state of mind through a variety of means. These can range from sophisticated methods like synthesizing drugs to ingesting psychoactive substances in plants and fungi. In one case documented by an Israeli researcher in 2021, prehistoric humans could have achieved a psychedelic experience by sitting in caves and lighting the entrance on fire, with the subsequent oxygen depletion causing hypoxia, which in turn causes an altered state of mind.

In layman's terms, people have always sought ways of getting high.

This has long been seen by many as a uniquely human trait. However, this isn't actually the case. In fact, there are a number of other types of animals that enjoy achieving an altered state of mind. These include reports of wallabies in Australia raiding medical poppy fields to get high on opium, reindeer eating psychedelic mushrooms, elephants getting drunk on Marula tree fruit and of course, cats and catnip.

And then, of course, there are primates. Great apes like gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans can be seen in viral videos on YouTube spinning around, essentially getting high and in an altered state.

And it was actually these YouTube videos that helped inspire the researchers behind this study. 

Great apes and getting high: Going bananas and getting spun

The researchers analyzed a vast number of videos on YouTube, spotting these great apes spinning multiple times, sometimes 1.5 times per second, in a way that they noted was similar to Muslim Sufi whirling dervishes, which itself is meant to induce a trance-like state. 

This works because the spinning causes neuronal cross-signaling, which helps induce dizziness, light-headedness, feelings of elation and other altered states of mind and perception.

Because of similar inner ear anatomy between humans and great apes as well as relatively similar body size, it is possible, if not likely, that spinning like this could induce the same altered state of mind in great apes as it does in humans.

Now, here is why this is so interesting.

Humans get high and/or drunk, as do some animals. But apes are another story.

True, there are many documented instances of apes getting drunk by consuming fruit filled with alcohol. However, there is no evidence indicating that they did this for the sake of getting drunk, rather than due to the high caloric value of the alcohol-filled food.

Getting high to evolve or evolving to get high?

Figuring out the reason for their alcohol consumption is important, as it has long been a question of some researchers as to whether an altered state of mind helped shape the course of evolution and the development of the modern human mind, or if humans only started trying to get high after evolution.

Calculating the apes in the videos showed that they were spinning at speeds that could get one high. 

While this is far from definitive proof, the researchers argue that this is still a proof of concept and that it is definitively something that is highly possible, as great apes have the necessary anatomy for it to be possible, as well as the intelligence to do so on their own without any human intervention – and one of the videos was of gorillas in the wild, rather than captivity.

However, it also raises more questions, such as whether this is something done only by specific individuals or by all apes, or if it is for a specific purpose or just recreational. 

More research on apes getting high by spinning could help fill the gaps. This could perhaps be facilitated by giving apes in captivity better access to methods for getting high, such as children's playground equipment like merry-go-rounds – something that some zoos have reportedly done already.

But overall, this study shows that there are grounds for further research in seeing the evolutionary history of getting high, in how it could have shaped human evolution and the many benefits it can bring for helping maintain mental well-being and overall mood.