“What surprised us was that the majority of species that are traded on the dark web are for their recreational drug properties, particularly for psychoactive compounds. People trade these to essentially lick them.”
– University of Adelaide ecologist
Phill Cassey, on the booming illegal wildlife trade on darknet markets. In a
new paper, Cassey and team identified 153 different species on offer, many of them with known drug properties. The toxic glands of the advertized Sonoran desert toad (
Incilius alvarius), for example, contain the psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT.
