Scientists Wanted To Know What Happens When Fish Get High

According to the Aquaculture Research journal, scientists in Nepal wanted to feed marijuana-like edibles to their fish, to see if it would get them to relax and speed up their growth process. They were curious, I guess. 

The tested fish were tilapia, who apparently lead very stressful lives, which is not a joke. You’d think that fish chill and swim for the duration of their days, but these animals are farmed intensively, which means that sometimes their fish pens are incredibly congested and their lifespans are shortened. Living with so many fish reduces their quality of water, offers more opportunities for diseases, and increases infraspecific interactions, which is a fancy way of saying that, when in close quarters, fish tend to bully each other. 

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Scientists thought that feeding marijuana to the fish would relax them, help them befriend each other and coexists. Sounds like a great idea, but sadly, the experiment didn’t work as they thought it would. The fish that were fed THC infused food were living just as long as the other fish, which meant that cannabis didn’t improve their quality of life. The only perk that the marijuana fed Tilapias experienced was that their metabolism was working faster, which made them hungrier, which is also, not what the experiment was after.

Scientists thought it’d be too expensive to feed them repeatedly, so the fish were just hungry and weren’t growing faster or stronger than the other fish who ate their normal meals. The results of the research led nowhere, so there probably won’t be any more marijuana and fish related studies in Nepal. We did learn that fish have the ability to get high, which is kind of interesting. Thanks?