Anyone who has ever had a marijuana plant at home knows: you either protect it by all means possible, or your dog will eat it. And dogs won’t just eat a little bit to purge, as carnivores sometimes do with other vegetable species, no. If you had eight plants, then the eight flowerpots would disappear. They gorge on them.
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The fact that animals also get messed up is something that has been known since Darwin observed a group of monkeys getting drunk with fermented fruits. And they are conscious of it, systematically locating areas where their favourite drugs grow and repeating their behaviour every season too. Primates and elephants stick to alcohol from rotten fruit, horses take jimson weed, reindeer prefer psychedelic mushrooms (especially amanita muscaria) and cats freak out with catnip.
But pot is a universal case. There is practically no animal species that isn’t tempted by the cannabis plant, or alternatively its seeds. This, of course, includes insects and other small bugs. That’s why marijuana plantations are subject to so many pests.
Does weed attract animals?
1. In Switzerland and Lichtenstein, where hemp feed for livestock has been prohibited fearing that THC will pass over to milk and meat destined for human consumption, farmers vigorously protest since they believe that animals grow better with cannabis and are more relaxed than with any other diet.
2. Rats and hamsters always choose cannabis seeds among any other, and laboratory studies have shown that they quickly gain a tolerance, which eliminates the risk of poisoning. So, to the question: Can hamsters eat weed? the answer is YES.
3. Some birdseed sellers claim that hemp seeds increase copulation in birds.
4. Ancient Greeks used cannabis to treat their animals: as an anti-inflammatory, to clean wounds and to prevent intestinal parasites. Ancient medicine treatises grant it a decisive importance for veterinary treatments.
Until its prohibition, in 1937, hundreds of remedies were sold in the United States that contained psychoactive cannabis oil for farm animals. These remedies were used for illnesses and identical disorders which nowadays are treated with medical marijuana for human beings: as an antispasmodic, sedative, analgesic and for all kinds of intestinal disorders.
5. In a 2001 study, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that breastfeeding female rabbits produce cannabinoids in their milk that stimulate the appetite of offspring, which led to further study the function of certain cannabinoids to stimulate human appetite.
Do animals eat marijuana plants?
Zoopharmacognosy investigates the deliberate use of natural resources by animals, such as the use of plants as medicine for example, or their use for fun. It seems logical that a plant with such obvious medicinal properties for humans would also attract the attention of other species, equally able to recognise its potential.
In addition, animals have the advantage of ignoring all the alarmist-prohibitionist rhetoric that humans have dealt with since the beginning of the twentieth century. They are driven by experience, and they repeat those behaviours that have proved beneficial to them. That is why there is no doubt that they will continue to consume marijuana whenever it’s within their reach.
So now you know, protect your plants with tooth and nail to defend them against your pets or you’ll have empty flowerpots and a stoned dog!