It’s not natural” is a refrain we hear time and again from the more conservative elements of our society, often as a protest against homosexuality, but also as an admonition on the joys of intoxication.

Bruce Bagemihl’s groundbreaking Biological Exhuberance – which details homosexual and autosexual behaviour in hundreds of species of animals – comprehensively demolishes the first argument, and is heavy enough to be useful in battering the message home if needs be. Samorini’s slender tome may not be much use in a fight, but in the right hands the information it contains has the potential to spark a revolution.

The bottom line: animals like to get high – hundreds of animal species, from the ant to the elephant, actively seek out hallucinogenic plants. Samorini is careful to distinguish between accidental intoxication – nature’s equivalent of being spiked – and the deliberate, methodical, at times even aggressive search for psychedelic satisfaction. This somewhat startling fact raises vital questions, not least that of animal consciousness.

If even an ant can tell the difference between being straight and high, in this instance by sucking secretions from the abdomen of a lomechusa beetle, what does this tell us about the consciousness of something like a mandrill, which munches the intensely potent iboga root, then waits up to two hours for the effects to kick in before engaging in territorial battle with another mandrill? Equally fascinating is the fact that many animals appear to use psychedelics recreationally – and that not all individuals of a particular species will indulge, just as some humans are more partial to tripping out than others. One in the eye for the stark behaviourists, it would seem.

All of Samorini’s evidence comes from first-hand observation by himself and others, though it is of the “we gave an elephant 300 tabs of LSD, it keeled over and died” school of science. But he does take great delight in describing the orderly queues formed by his neighbourhood cats as they take hits on his catnip plant; or of being butted out of the way by an Alpine goat who thought he was going to munch a clump of tasty psilocybin mushrooms before it did.

Too careful to speculate at any length on why animals take drugs, here Samorini concedes to Ronald K Siegel (from whose Intoxication much of the observational material is also drawn) and Edward de Bono. Siegel suggests that intoxication is an evolutionary force, while de Bono talks of the value of depatterning in evolutionary development – forcing the mind to break with established routines and habits, and so discover new approaches to important matters of survival.

Unquestionably, certain psychedelic plants also improve perception and sharpen the senses, giving the psychedelicised predator, or prey, a distinct evolutionary advantage. But if Samorini won’t speculate, we certainly can. If animals use psychedelic drugs, and we know that Stone Age humans did, and presumably their ancestors, might we not wonder – in Terence McKenna mode – what kind of role they played in the evolution of human consciousness?

Unfortunately this is a short book, an overview rather than an in-depth study, but that necessary work will surely come. Until then, this must be one of the most inspiring books about animals – or drugs – that you are likely to read.

One hundred pages of animal magic