Elephants on Acid (15 page)

Siegel’s experiment cast doubt on the idea that it was the LSD that killed Tusko, but he could not rule out the possibility. After all, the amount given to Tusko may have exceeded some threshold of toxicity. Siegel also noted that LSD did not induce a musth-like state, which disproved West, Pierce, and Thomas’s original hypothesis.

Siegel’s experiment demonstrated what should have happened to Tusko in 1962. The sad reality, however, is that Tusko died. Ironically, his death ensured that, instead of ending up as a footnote in obscure articles about zoological pharmacology, Tusko gained a permanent place in pop culture. In addition to articles and books (such as the one you’re reading now), he has inspired music. In 1990 singer-songwriter David Orr formed a rock band, Tusko Fatale, that acquired a minor cult following in the Virginia area, where it was based. Their song, “The Unfortunate Elephant,” eulogizes Tusko: “The spider spins the more perfect web / The elephant, he drops over dead / The writer writes the more perfect line / In common we all lose track of time.”

The scientific literature records no other cases of elephants given LSD. This makes Tusko and the two elephants in Siegel’s 1982 experiment the sole pachyderm pioneers of the psychedelic experience.

Yet, paradoxically, elephants are widely associated with LSD.
Pink elephants
is a slang term for the drug, apparently inspired by a pattern commonly used on blotter paper during the 1990s. Then there is the scene from the 1941 Disney
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movie
Dumbo
, in which the big-eared elephant hallucinates enormous pink elephants on parade. Dumbo got high from drinking moonshine, not taking LSD, but users of the drug praise the scene as the perfect viewing material for a psychedelic trip. At the very least, it is a far more humane way to experience elephants on acid than the alternative.

The starting light switches on. The gate opens, and the sprinter is off. She scurries directly onto the runway. The crowd in the stands goes wild. They wave their antennae back and forth, climbing all over one another in their excitement. Of course, most of them don’t seem to be paying any attention to the sprinter, so perhaps it’s the powerful floodlight that’s causing them to go wild. Nevertheless, energized by their presence, the sprinter hurries forward, speeding toward the darkness looming ahead.

During the late 1960s psychologist Robert Zajonc spent a lot of time racing cockroaches—female
Blatta orientalis
, to be specific—in his University of Michigan lab. He carefully timed their runs with a stopwatch, and even built them a miniature stadium.

The stadium consisted of a 20 x 20 x 20-inch clear plastic cube. A runway, made of a transparent tube, ran straight through the cube, from a starting box at one end to a darkened goal box at the other. Zajonc also placed clear plastic boxes (aka bleachers) on either side of the runway. Cockroaches crawled around in these boxes—a captive audience.

Zajonc kept his roach-runners alone in a dark jar for a week before the big day, feeding them sliced apples, priming them for peak performance. On the day of the event, he placed a single roach in the starting box of the apparatus, turned on a 150-watt floodlight behind the box, and opened a gate, allowing the roach access to the tube. Away the roach would go, fleeing from the bright light toward the comforting darkness of the box at the other end.

Zajonc wasn’t doing this for sport. At least, if he was, he didn’t admit it. He was attempting to determine whether the athletic performance of a cockroach would improve in front of an audience of its peers—which is why he tested how fast the roaches ran both with an audience and without one.

What he found was that roaches definitely ran faster in the presence of other roaches. This fact alone might have merited his study a brief mention in a reference guide to cockroach behavior, but Zajonc argued his discovery had wider significance.

The phenomenon at work, he suggested, was “social facilitation.” The mere presence of other cockroaches somehow gave his runners an extra boost of energy. And if this is true for cockroaches, then it might, he theorized, be true for humans. As Zajonc put it, “The presence of others is a source of nonspecific arousal. It can energize all responses likely to be emitted in the given situation.” Translation: You’ll probably run faster in front of a crowd than without one.

Why would this be? Zajonc chalked it up to an automatic, physiological reflex. A creature that is alone can relax, but if members of its species are around, it needs to be more alert, in case it needs to respond to something they do. This extra alertness can enhance performance on a task such as running in a straight line. But there’s a catch. The enhancement effect only works for simple tasks. The performance of complex tasks—ones that require some concentration—suffers in the presence of others. The extra energy creates sensory overload, making it harder to sort through thoughts.

Zajonc demonstrated this by adding a twist to his experiment. He made the roaches navigate a simple maze before they could reach the safety of the dark box. Sure enough, the roaches performed slower when challenged with figuring out the maze as their companions watched. To imagine how this observation might apply to humans, think of a task that requires some thought—solving mathematical problems, perhaps. Zajonc would predict that the effect of feeling self-conscious would inhibit performance of such a task in front of an audience.

Since Zajonc’s experiment, the phenomenon has been tested in numerous species, including chickens, gerbils, centipedes, goldfish, and, of course, humans. The mere presence of others does, almost invariably, increase the speed of simple tasks and decrease the speed of complex tasks. In one test to confirm this, researchers used a telephoto lens to spy on joggers, attempting to discover whether they ran faster as they passed observers sitting by the side of the road. They did. The social-facilitation effect even appears to extend to mannequins. Subjects in a study at the University of Wisconsin performed a simple task faster when sitting in a room with a mannequin than when sitting in the room alone. Just about
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the only thing that hasn’t been studied is whether the mere presence of a cockroach has a facilitating effect upon human performance. Judging by how fast some people run when they see the little creatures pop up in the kitchen, antennae waving, it probably does.

Their eyes lock in a stare. It is a battle of wills. Who will look away first? The man focuses all his mental energy on his opponent. His eyes are like twin laser beams, intense and unwavering. His opponent stares back, her eyes black and impassive. For five long seconds they hold each other’s gaze, until abruptly the sheep looks away. She bleats once and urinates on the ground.

Have you ever caught a stranger staring at you? Did it make you feel nervous, uncomfortable, or afraid? Now imagine you were a sheep. How do you think you would feel if a human was staring at you and wouldn’t stop? That was what researchers at New Zealand’s Massey University wondered.

To find out the answer, one of them stood inside a wooden-floored arena and stared at a sheep for ten minutes. He followed the animal’s every movement with his eyes. The study’s design protocol specified that “if the test sheep made eye contact, it was maintained until the sheep looked away.” Thankfully for the pride of all involved, no instances were recorded in which the sheep stared down the human.

Throughout November 2001, a total of twenty sheep were subjected to the staring test. Next, the researchers repeated the experiment, substituting, in place of the staring man, either a cardboard box or a guy who gazed at the floor. Hidden observers recorded the behavior of the sheep in each situation. They looked, in particular, for signs of fear, such as freezing in place, attempting to escape, or glancing repeatedly at the stimulus.

The final data offered both expected and unexpected results. As expected, “individual sheep showed more fear-or aversion-related behavior in the presence of a human than with a cardboard box.”

But, unexpectedly, the sheep displayed less fear toward the staring man than they did toward the eyes-downcast man. The sheep kept their distance from the guy staring at the floor, as if to say, “You won’t look at me, so I don’t trust you.” However, they did urinate more often when directly stared at. The reason for that was unknown.

The Massey University study might seem a little eccentric, but there’s actually a wealth of research involving the reactions of animals to staring humans. Animals that researchers have spent time staring at include iguanas, snakes, gulls, sparrows, and chickens. Such studies are part of a larger effort to understand predator-prey relationships—specifically, how prey animals react to visual cues from predators.

Researchers have also tested the reactions of humans to being stared at, although these studies get published in social-psychology journals rather than animal-behavior ones. In a widely cited 1972 experiment, Stanford University researchers pulled up to a red light on a motor scooter and fixedly stared at the driver of the car next to them. About four feet typically separated the experimenter and subject. Most of the people who were stared at exhibited a similar response. They would notice the staring scooter operater almost right away and then:

Within a second or two, they would avert their own gaze and begin to indulge in a variety of apparently nervous behaviors, such as fumbling with their clothing or radio, revving up the engines of their cars, glancing frequently at the traffic light, or initiating animated conversation with their passengers. If there was a long time interval before the light changed, the subjects tended to glance furtively back at the experimenter, averting their gaze as soon as their eyes met his.

The experimenters stared until the light turned green, and then timed how quickly the drivers crossed the intersection. The drivers typically jammed down on the gas and flew through the lights. The researchers concluded that we humans interpret staring as a threat display and respond with avoidance behavior, such as speeding away from staring weirdos on motor scooters, to remove ourselves from danger.

Comparing the sheep and human studies, you might conclude that sheep are braver than humans. After all, the sheep didn’t try to flee the presence of the staring human. However, it probably has nothing to do with bravery. A more likely interpretation is that sheep are so used to humans acting strange that they don’t really care what we do anymore. And we humans can take comfort in the knowledge that at least we don’t urinate when stared at. Or do we? The Stanford researchers had no way to observe whether that particular response occurred in any of their subjects. So if you ever decide to stare at another driver at an intersection and they
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suddenly get a sheepish grin on their face, you now might wonder why.

Timmy has fallen down a well. “Lassie, get help!” he calls up from the darkness. Lassie pricks up her ears, looks down the well, and then takes off running. Soon she finds a ranger.

“Bark! Bark! Bark!”

“What is it, Lassie?” he says. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“Bark! Bark!” Lassie motions with her snout, then begins running back toward the well. Concerned, the ranger follows closely behind.

If you were trapped down a well like Timmy, what would your dog do? Would it run to get help, or would it wander off to sniff a tree? If you own a trained rescue dog it would probably get help, but what about an average dog, the kind whose greatest passions in life are (a) bacon, and (b) barking at the neighbor’s cat? Would it figure out what to do in an emergency situation?

To find out, researchers Krista Macpherson and William Roberts from the University of Western Ontario arranged for twelve dog owners to pretend to have a heart attack while walking their dogs through an open field. The owners all performed the exact same actions. When they reached a pre-designated point in the field, marked by a target painted on the ground, they began breathing heavily, coughed, gasped, clutched their arm, fell over, and then lay motionless on the ground. A video camera hidden in a tree recorded what their dogs did next. In particular, the researchers were curious to see whether the dogs would seek help from a stranger sitting ten meters away.

The dogs—from a variety of breeds, including collies, German shepherds, rottweilers, and poodles—didn’t do much to promote the theory of canine intelligence. They spent some time nuzzling and pawing their owners before taking the opportunity to roam around aimlessly. Only one dog—a toy poodle—directly made contact with the stranger. It ran over and jumped in the person’s lap—not because it was trying to signal that its owner was in distress, but because it wanted to be petted. It probably figured,
Uh-oh! My owner’s dead. I need someone to adopt me!

Concerned that the heart-attack scenario may have been too subtle for the dogs—perhaps they thought their owners were just taking a nap—and that the presence of the passive stranger might have suggested to the dogs that nothing was wrong, the researchers designed a second, more dramatic test.

They arranged for each of fifteen dog owners to bring their dogs into an obedience school, greet a person in the front lobby, and then walk into a second room, where a bookcase then fell on the person. (Or, at least, the bookcase appeared to fall on the person. In reality, the researchers had shown each dog owner how to pull the piece of furniture down in such a way that it would only look like an accident without actually hurting the person.) Pinned beneath the shelves, each owner let go of his or her dog’s leash and began imploring the animal to get help from the person in the lobby.

Once again, the canine response to the emergency was somewhat lacking. The dogs spent a good deal of time
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standing by their owners, wagging their tails, but not a single one went to get help. The researchers concluded that “the fact that no dog solicited help from a bystander—neither when its owner had a ‘heart attack’ nor when its owner was toppled by a bookcase and called for help—suggests that dogs did not recognize these situations as emergencies and/or did not understand the need to obtain help from a bystander.” In other words, don’t expect Fido to save your life.