So, Scientists Gave These Fish Magic Mushrooms- But, Why?!

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Hello mother, hello father, here I am at Fish Tree Yada.

[00:00:06]I got some crazy stories to tell you.

[00:00:09]It's about fishes eating mushrooms, I say hell yeah. So hey guys, what is going on? We've got a weird one for you today. Yes, indeed, it is about fish eating those magical fungi. Now, I have been demonetized, also I've been like straight up kicked off the platform for periods of time for simply talking about this subject. So I have to be really careful even though this is completely educational. I'm not encouraging humans to do any of this, [clears throat] and I am simply reporting on research that has already occurred, and in this case in fish. It's not even about humans. So there are applications in neurology that perhaps one day may impact humans, and that's what's pretty interesting. But you know, scientists, they're at it again. If if you give them 5 minutes to themselves, one of them always comes up with the idea, "Hey, let's give a fish some kind of chemical, some like brain or mind-altering, you know, chemical."

[00:01:12]>> [snorts] >> And we reported recently on the salmon and that snow white and the big changes that caused. Well, this week we are talking about the mangrove killifish.

[00:01:25]And in particular, these killifish are very aggressive. They're super super aggressive and territorial. They're just known to be cranky little dudes. And the fascinating part about all of this is that those effects that you may relate to psilocybin, the the magical kind of fungi, are not super predictable always. You can have a really scary time, you can have a very like euphoric and almost a religious experience, or you can just have like a mild little bit of energy without any visuals or anything. And sometimes it's a very heavy visual thing. So, dose is really important, first thing I want to say. And we've known that about this substance. But, because it was illegal for so long to study anything about this substance, we've kind of been in the dark about like low dosing it or certain aspects of it like in the future where you could tweak the molecule and you could maybe stop the part that causes visual uh distortions and hallucinations. And you could actually maybe just get the serotonergic and and dopamine related effects. And so, that's what's really exciting about this. So, let me tell you about the the study. So, they took these [clears throat] fish and they put them in a box as scientists always do.

[00:02:52]So, they put the fish in a box, a rectangular box, one on the left, and they have a sheet of fiberglass separating them uh from left and right half of the tank. The water's still mixing, there's holes in the wall of fiberglass so that they can smell each other, their pheromones, and uh I whatever it is that fish do uh chemically in the water, they can still sense each other like that. And they can visually see each other through the barrier. Psilocybin, they put that in the water in its pure form. I think if four international unit or five international units is what they start with, and I think 20 as well. This really low dose, even for a fish, that's a that's a like considered a a low dose.

[00:03:37]But, what they found, uh they they thought they'd probably get erratic behavior or maybe amorous behavior. These fish happen to actually be able to self-inseminate, and they happen to be hermaphroditic as well. So, they're super interesting fish biologically anyways, and the fact that they're aggressive is kind of interesting. Like it's kind of perhaps because they don't need no partner, you know, they they are independent women, men, things, fish, its, fish its. And they are, you know, able to survive. They're big time survivors.

[00:04:13]But they are aggressive. So, when you put them in the tank together, usually on either side, left and right, they start flaring and charging and they'll actually run up and tap the the fiberglass charging at one another. Now, in science we look at the cost of these things in calories and energy a lot. And that's also the same in anthropology and economics, psychology, things like that because it's kind of like an international standard or unit that we can look at when we don't know what a fish is really thinking. We can say, "Well, a fish, a human, a bird, whatever, it used a whole day's worth of eating energy to show off that anger or to attack or to reproduce or whatever it's doing." And so, it's a good way of measuring how much an animal views something as worth it. Maybe not psychologically, but at least evolutionarily, instinctually it tells us, "Okay, well, they thought that was a very worthwhile thing to do even though it took days worth of energy and calories to accomplish." And so, like we know reproduction and showing off to win a mate are both things that fish and humans, obviously, were willing to spend days, months, sometimes years worth of the energy to show off for that right person, that right other fish in the sea. And what was interesting to see about all this is that the fish that normally are are willing to charge and be aggressive and say go away to these other fish, they just sat there and chilled. And you could say, "Oh, well, they were sedated, you know, any sort of chemical that could sedate you would do that. And if you know the effects of the magical fungi, it's not sedating. That's not really the words anybody would probably use. I'm sorry, I'm here in this makeshift production studio and apparently one of the lights wants to recreate my lightning experience in the background.

[00:06:09]So, I apologize for the Texas Chainsaw vibes going on.

[00:06:14]Well, we're filming tonight, but I didn't want to wake up the misses. So, anyways, back to the fish. They they don't spend the energy showing off being angry. And then after 20 minutes of them being observed, they actually felt comfortable enough to remove the divider and they let them be one-on-one with the other fish and they found that they didn't attack at all. They just kind of chilled and they would actually swim around and kind of like say hello in in fish language and they would turn and they would sometimes even flare fin a little bit and and kind of show off like the the goods, I guess.

[00:06:50]But, what's fascinating about that is that if they were just sedated or if they were under the effects of something like a sleeping pill or an opiate, something like that in the past that we've tried on these fish and other fish, they just sit there and they're sedated, but they don't behave naturally. What's interesting about all this is that they still seem to be interacting socially and interpersonally with the other fish, just all the aggression is gone.

[00:07:19]It's wild. That's absolutely fascinating and it seems as though the reward pathways, at least in fish, which very different than humans, but that the reward pathways for that violent and very costly energy display, it's just simply not there or it's not seen as rewarding or not even thought of as something to do in a one-time exposure. Now, if we give it to them every day, will they acclimate to it and eventually just go back to their old ways of being little jerks?

[00:07:48]Maybe, I don't know. So, I hope they do follow-up studies. Now, this was done at the Frontiers of Behavioral Neuroscience journal. I hope and I am pretty sure that they will do further research on this because they're also looking for things like Parkinson's treatments where we know that dopamine and serotonin have a large role to play and we want things like a flood of that reward system in the brain or a blocking of some of the things that limit that and but we want it to keep going. We want we want it to be able to allow nerves, neurons, and even like basic motion which is required to use some of the same chemicals, we want it to be able to be sustained whereas in Parkinson's and some of these other illnesses, there's not even enough for that let alone, you know, there's the whole our people have be or depressed or whatnot, too. But, just the sheer fact of mobility and the fact that we need serotonin, dopamine, things like that for initiating movement and the reward loop in our brain of even our brain saying like I want to reach for something, I'm going to do that. Okay, I did it. I got the reward. Like, you may not think of that as rewarding, but it is and chemically speaking, this shows that in the fish from everything they can see that they're being rewarded as is and so they don't feel the need basically to lash out or anything, but they're also still getting a good enough reward or even even better reward for being cooperative, peaceful, chill little fish. Really interesting research. Don't know what it means in the long run. I'm curious what you guys think. So, I just thought I'd put this out. Real low production value, obviously.

[00:09:30]But, I was fascinated by this and I wanted to share it with y'all fishstorians and you know, middle of the night just kind of doom scrolling and by doom scrolling I just mean reading scientific journal articles. That's enough doom and gloom for my day sometimes but sometimes you find something very fascinating or hopeful. So hopefully they don't take this down YouTube reviewers please don't and if you guys like this kind of weird fringe content somewhat about fish not really about aquariums but definitely about science give me a follow and a like or or share it. Means a lot to me. All right you guys have a good one and I'll talk to you next time on Fish Theory.