What is the taste of honey from bees collecting pollen durin a war? Do snakes feel stress? A new study shows that war impacts the least expected creatures

Animals too feel the effects from the stress of war, finds a new study conducted at Tel Aviv University’s School of Zoology. Researchers reveal that the Israel-Hamas war has had a severe impact on animals.

The study, which focused on geckos, found that the sound of explosions from fired rockets induces stress and anxiety in these creatures, leading to a sharp increase in their metabolic rates — an energy cost that, if chronic, may be life-threatening. The researchers hypothesize that these stress responses characterize many other animals, especially those who live in the conflict zones in northern and southern Israel.

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Shahar Dubiner, one of the researchers said: “Our research was conducted in a laboratory at Tel Aviv University and pertained to the reverberations of explosions from interceptions in the Tel Aviv area. However, given the unequivocal results showing symptoms of stress, we can infer that animals that are in the immediate conflict zones in the south and north of the country, where the intensity and frequency of fire are much higher, suffer from significantly more severe stress and anxiety symptoms that may endanger their lives.”

The study was led by Shahar Dubiner, Prof. Shai Meiri and Prof. Eran Levin — in collaboration with Reut Vardi of the University of Oxford. The study was published in the journal Ecology.

The sounds of war are a sort of sound pollution which probably also affect marine life like whales, coral, dolphins and baby oysters.

“The most tragic aspect of war is the loss of human life, among both soldiers and civilians. However, animals are also severely affected, both directly and indirectly, in ways that may threaten their survival. A few weeks before October 7, we began working on a long-term study to measure the rate of energy consumption of small ground geckos of the species Stenodactylus sthenodactylus.

“We obviously did not foresee the outbreak of the war, but unintentionally, we recorded the energy consumption of five geckos during the rocket barrages launched into Tel Aviv in the first month of the war,” says Prof. Shai Meiri. Recently, Meiri published a study on rain and biodiversity.

The study’s findings showed that at the sound of the bombings, the geckos’ metabolic rate jumped to double what it was when they were at rest. Their breathing became faster, and they clearly exhibited signs of stress.

The experiment lasted up to four hours after the barrages, yet even within this timeframe the geckos did not calm down and return to their resting levels. Moreover, even after a month of continuous fighting, the geckos did not acclimate to the sound of the explosions — their stress response remained unchanged.

Prof. Levin notes that “A state of stress is detrimental to both humans and animals. To compensate for the increase in oxygen consumption and depletion of energy reserves, animals need to eat more. Even if they manage to find food, in the process they expose themselves to predators and lose opportunities to reproduce.

“In a situation of ongoing conflict, such as the current reality in Gaza, the Gaza Envelope, and along the Israeli-Lebanese border, the metabolic cost can be significant and have a real impact on the energy reserves and activity periods of reptiles and other animals. This can exacerbate their conservation status, especially for species that are already endangered.”

The researchers note that the findings of this study are consistent with another experiment conducted during Operation Guardian of the Walls, in which they also observed a stress response in a small snake of the species Xerotyphlops syriacus.

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I can’t count how many friends of mine have travelled to the Amazon to use psychedelic drugs. It’s much easier these days to find local shamans offering ayahuasca local to you. And if you are crafty and have access to a forest in Canada for amanitas like I do. Today you can easily forage for your own mushrooms.

But like in the early days of acid when synthetic psychedelics could be too powerful and melt your brain, those self-medicating or going to centers and shamans for help now know that micro-dosing – taking the medicine in tiny amounts – could be beneficial against trauma, depression and PTSD.

Psychedelics  appear to work by encouraging the growth of new connections between neurons in the brain. And research, like research into cannabis CBD and THC, is slowly catching up to science.

Researchers don’t fully understand why psychedelics have such powerful therapeutic effects. Now, a study in mice suggests that psychedelics all work in the same way: they reset the brain to a youthful state in which it can easily absorb new information and form crucial connections between neurons.

DMT (Dimethyltryptamine) is a very strong psychedelic found in a number of animals and plants. Psychedelic drugs can affect all the senses, altering a person’s thinking, sense of time and emotions. Psychedelics can cause someone to hallucinate, seeing or hearing things that do not exist or are distorted.

Psychedelics such as MDMA (also known as ecstasy), ketamine and psilocybin — the active ingredient in magic mushrooms — are known for producing mind-altering effects, including hallucinations in some cases. But each compound affects a different biochemical pathway in the brain during the short-term ‘trip’, leaving scientists to wonder why so many of these drugs share the ability to relieve depression, addiction and other difficult-to-treat conditions in the long term.

Gül Dölen, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and her colleagues sought answers by studying how psychedelics affect social behaviour in mice. Mice can learn to associate socializing with positive feelings, but only during an adolescent ‘critical period’, which closes as they become adults.

Researchers gave a range of psychedelics to mice, including ketamine, psilocybin, MDMA, LSD and ibogaine. The drugs seemed to reopen a ‘critical period’ in which mice can learn to associate socializing with positive feelings.

The scientists trained mice to associate one ‘bedroom’ in their mouse enclosure with mousy friends and another room with solitude. They could then examine how psychedelics affected the rodents’ room choices — a proxy for whether the drug affects the critical period.

“It gives hope that [critical periods] are not irreversible and a very careful cellular understanding of psychedelic drugs might hold the key to reopening brain plasticity,” says neurologist Takao Hensch, part of the Nature study.

Some applications in this research may treat people after strokes when there is a critical window for physical rehab after the stroke event.

About anyone looking to self-medicate, find a trusted shaman or micro-dosing center. Never try this without a mentor. 

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Founded by a retired biologist who supplied cancer patients with home-grown marijuana, Tikun Olam farm grows the herb and gives guidance to people disabled by pain.

We may associate growing marijuana with furtive operations and police raids, but in Israel there are at least seven facilities authorized to grow the herb for medicine. See our recent post on Israel’s newly-relaxed regulations on medical marijuana. And while illegal traders make big profits, Israel’s  biggest authorized cannabis suppliers simply gift it to licensed patients who can’t afford to pay.

Tikun Olam is the name of the farm, and its name, which translates as “repairing the world,” reflects its idealistic origins.

Dora Cohen, a retired biologist with a big heart, began cultivating the plant in two rooms of her own home to help cancer patients. With official recognition of marijuana’s effectiveness in pain management, she and her family founded a facility with 11,000 square meters of greenhouses, automatic climate control systems, and a meteorological station.

The farm is located in an unpublicized area in the north. Police surveillance of the area is stringent, with cameras everywhere and the workers checked for smuggling. Strict safety precautions are taken when the processed marijuana is transported to patient’s homes or to Tikkun Olam’s center in Tel Aviv.

When we asked the farm’s spokesperson, Yuval “Tubi” Zolotov, about visiting the farm, he explained that it entails a complicated clearing process through the police. Luckily, he gave us a good picture of medical cannabis in Israel today by phone.

Green Prophet: What’s special about medical marijuana?

Zolotov: The best-known chemical constituents of cannabis are the cannabinoids, and THC is the most famous of those. It’s the strongest one for making a person feel high. But it’s not  the most important cannabinoid for medical purposes. We are working on developing other strains of cannabis with lower THC values.

Green Prophet: Do patients get high anyway?

Zolotov: Each person reacts in his/her individual way to cannabis. Our clients are sick people seeking relief from physical or psychiatric suffering. It’s an entirely different atmosphere than when a person smokes it for fun. But presumably some people do experience a mild high. On the other hand, every conventional medication for major pain relief produces side effects and dependencies. Cannabis’s are far milder.

Green Prophet: Once a person has obtained a license to buy cannabis, do they just take the cigarettes home and start smoking?

Zolotov: We provide trained guides on managing safe treatment at home. We can’t recommend dosage because every patient has an individual pain threshold which he/she must learn to manage according to need. Some patients prefer to absorb cannabis through a tincture in alcohol (administered in drops), an edible oil from the seeds, or to eat chocolate or cookies containing marijuana.

(Find Green Prophet’s recipe for Majoun marijuana candy here.)

Green Prophet: Approximately how many patients are authorized to use marijuana today?

Zolotov: It’s hard to say, because cannabis is usually issued only to patients in later stages of disease and so there are a certain number of deaths, as well as new patients, all the time. But we estimate 7000-8000 people. There are 120,000 cancer patients today in Israel; we estimate that in the future at least 40,000 of them will be using medical cannabis.

Green Prophet: Thank you, Tubi Zolotov.

More about cannabis and other drugs in the Middle East:

• Marijuana Prevents PTSD
• Yemen’s Problems Blamed on Gat
•  Book Review: Uses and Abuses of Plant-Derived Smoke

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