alt.hn

4/21/2026 at 5:27:35 AM

Salmon exposed to cocaine and its main byproduct roam more widely

 https://www.science.org/content/article/cocaine-pollution-gives-salmon-wanderlust

by 1659447091

4/21/2026 at 8:24:10 AM

Could this not have been simply an instinct to find cleaner waters? I'm surprised they didn't add another control group which injected something unpleasant that could be naturally found in an area, but would be undesirable - ammonia, some sort of acid, or something along those lines.

by somenameforme

4/21/2026 at 9:40:53 AM

The title ie a bit misleading:

The study want to prove that cocaine is yet another polluter thar alters the fish behaviour even in the small quantities that can be found in the wild in polluted areas. Not that something is special or different about cocaine pollution.

So the control group in this case are fishes with an implant with no drug at all.

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(26)...

by anthonj

4/21/2026 at 11:04:24 AM

At very low doses, for example chewing the leaves of coke instead of using the high purified version, it's somewhat like drinking a coffee [1].

I expect the fish to be more active. A coffee patch would be a nice 4th group as another control.

[1] Chewing the leaves of coke is common in many countries of South America, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acullico

by gus_massa

4/21/2026 at 11:46:51 AM

[flagged]

by tomalbrc

4/21/2026 at 12:04:48 PM

Because even in low concentrations, I expect cocaine to have a different effect than Valium. (And in both case I expect a different effect at high concentrations.)

by gus_massa

4/21/2026 at 12:27:45 PM

What the fuck is your problem?

by rcbdev

4/21/2026 at 10:44:48 AM

Agree with your point overall, but ammonia in particular is a poor example.

Fish lack urea cycle, so they produce and excrete significant amounts of ammonia as part of normal metabolism.

by kees99

4/21/2026 at 10:27:59 AM

I learned recently about “Vin Mariani” a wine from the 1860s that was fortified with coca leaves and contained 6mg per liquid ounce of the wine; except for the bottles sold in USA where it was 7.2mg per ounce, because there were other patent medicines that had cocaine in them and the manufacturer added a bit more to be competitive in the market.

The Pope of the time loved the stuff and awarded the company a Vatican medal for it.

by shrubble

4/21/2026 at 11:34:46 AM

While I love the Internet and all sorts of modern life fixtures (in a developed country), I feel a bit like I missed out by not being alive when all the crazy drinks were around.

by sekh60

4/21/2026 at 12:27:50 PM

Probably best to have missed out on radium water.

by chuckadams

4/21/2026 at 12:09:35 PM

And John Pemberton produced a clone of Vin Mariani but when alcohol prohibition was passed in Atlanta he produced a non-acoholic version... coca-cola.

by colechristensen

4/21/2026 at 11:36:10 AM

never knew this was a thing. seems it's still available to buy! sounds like a more respectable version of Buckfast, the tonic wine made in an abbey in Devon that had/has a cult popularity with the youth of parts of Ireland and Scotland

by j_french

4/21/2026 at 9:58:56 AM

And just like that, smoked Salmon became popular again :)

BTW, did you knew municipalities can easily measure fluctuations in drug usage by testing the sewage water? In fact, sometimes they can see clear differences between different parts of the city.

by throwa356262

4/21/2026 at 10:28:43 AM

Is data like that sold anywhere? I wonder if there’s an analytics market for profiling neighborhoods based on sewage water content now. If my browser history wasn’t already rock bottom, that’s a new low for the ad market

by hmokiguess

4/21/2026 at 12:05:34 PM

Fun fact: if you sign up for many online casinos or betting sites they will indeed use Google Streetview to lookup your house to estimate how much money they might extract from you.

by bjourne

4/21/2026 at 12:11:33 PM

that's wild, do you have a source? curious to know more

by hmokiguess

4/21/2026 at 11:04:43 AM

> BTW, did you knew municipalities can easily measure fluctuations in drug usage by testing the sewage water?

Yep. Not just drugs are monitored this way, but also the spread of infectious diseases. That can lead to sometimes pretty weird findings - for example, polio virus is supposed to be extinct, but every so often it shows up in sewage monitoring of major German cities [1]. The cause most likely are people (tourists and immigrants) from Africa and Asia that got an attenuated virus-based vaccination in their home country shortly before they came here.

Covid is, at least in Bavaria, also part of the regular monitoring schedule [2], Austria monitors for Covid, RSV and influenza [3].

[1] https://www.aerzteblatt.de/news/erreger-der-kinderlaehmung-i...

[2] https://bay-voc.lgl.bayern.de/abwassermonitoring

[3] https://abwasser.ages.at/de/

by mschuster91

4/21/2026 at 9:40:33 AM

Shine on you crazy salmon

by pixelpoet

4/21/2026 at 10:22:57 AM

Cocaine bear, cocaine shark, cocaine… salmon?

by api

4/21/2026 at 11:43:22 AM

Next up: smackhead whales, dolphins on crack, and manatees hitting the bong.

by windowliker

4/21/2026 at 7:11:04 AM

If that is not one good argument to start producing cocaine locally, then I don't know!

Save the fish.

by zhouzhao

4/21/2026 at 7:35:34 AM

Roaming more widely may not be healthy for the salmon.

by HPsquared

4/21/2026 at 8:45:27 AM

Whether it is or is not, is not a function of the cocaine though, but rather idiosyncrasies of the wider ecologies the salmon are in.

If roaming more widely introduces them to more productive food opportunities (or, lower predation) than their closer ecology, then it would be beneficial for them. If it does not, then it wouldn't be. Neither context is determined in the basic finding that cocaine causes them to roam more widely.

by parodysbird

4/21/2026 at 9:30:47 AM

They’re in a better mood though.

by grebc

4/21/2026 at 7:58:12 AM

I think another study is in order examining how cocaine affects breeding habits.

by finghin

4/21/2026 at 10:03:51 AM

What about the rats and turtles in sewers? They might become more agresive!

by kvgr

4/21/2026 at 10:38:24 AM

There is trash 80s "horror" movie waiting to be made.

by lynx97

4/21/2026 at 10:50:27 AM

Gotta give them something to improve their perception of their living conditions!

by zhouzhao

4/21/2026 at 10:03:21 AM

We’re looking at you, Vancouver.

by throwpoaster