In 1995, NASA ditched space for an experiment and got spiders stoned on marijuana, caffeine, chloral hydrate, etc.; one of these made spiders’ webs wonky and disorganised. It was not marijuana

Drugs don’t only make a fool out of humans and destroy our mental well-being and productivity; they also have an impact on animals as well. In 1995, a group of NASA scientists studied closely the effect of various drugs on spider behaviour, specifically if they have an impact on how they build their webs. Although NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) is dedicated to unfogging the mysteries of space, the purpose of this experiment was not navigating the cosmos but just understanding spider reaction to drugs.

In April 1995, a NASA technical briefing titled "Using Spider-Web Patterns To Determine Toxicity" was released.

Researchers David A. Noever, Raymond J. Cronise, and Rachna A. Relwani of the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center described an experiment in which they subjected spiders to different compounds.


The briefing stated that the study's goal was to assess a chemical's toxicity by exposing spiders to it and analysing how their webs varied from those of a typical spider.

According to Newsweek, the spiders were dosed with several drugs – marijuana, benzedrine, caffeine, and chloral hydrate.

Results Of The Experiment

An article on Mirage News shared the startling results of the experiment. It was not marijuana which had the most severe impact on the spider’s web-building abilities, but caffeine. Considered by humans as a mild stimulant, caffeine-dosed spiders led to the most disorganised and chaotic webs, proving that drugs can impact the behaviour and motor skills of even spiders.

The adverse effect of caffeine on spiders is not particularly shocking, as the plants secrete caffeine to ward off pests.

Marijuana produced smaller webs with longer rest intervals between web-building, but benzedrine produced larger, less structured webs.

The sedative chloral hydrate caused the spiders to fall asleep before completing their webs, resulting in unfinished webs.

According to an article shared by Rare Historical Photos, NASA was hardly the first researchers to find out that spiders were not immune to being drugged. In 1948, Swiss pharmacologist Peter N. Witt made a startling discovery when he dosed spiders with drugs.

When he dosed them with a variety of drugs which included amphetamine, mescaline, strychnine, LSD, and caffeine, he found that at small doses of caffeine, the webs were considerably smaller, but the regularity of the circles was unaffected. At higher doses of caffeine, the shape of the webs changed, and the web patterns became disorganised. The webs lost their orbital shape, looked random in construction, and were “ineffective” as traps.