Science & Technology, UK (Commonwealth Union) – Mind-altering experiences are experiences that profoundly affect an individual’s state of consciousness and alter their perceptions, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. These experiences can be induced by various methods, including the use of psychoactive substances, meditation, sensory deprivation or overload, hypnosis, spiritual practices, and other means. The type of mind altering experiences we have can be influenced by positive factors such as prayer and meditation to more negative factors such as drugs.
Recent research has observed that great apes purposely spin themselves with the aim of making themselves dizzy and the findings may give clues linked to the human’ drive to experience altered mental states.
The researchers noted a viral video of a male gorilla spinning in a pool, and as they conducted further research on YouTube, they found more videos of gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans all carrying out spinning behaviors.
Analyzing more than 40 online videos of apes spinning on ropes and vines, the researchers discovered that on average the primates moved around 5.5 times per episode of spinning, having an average speed of 1.5 revolutions per second and the primates conducted this on average 3 times.
The results were published in Primates, where researchers from the Universities of Birmingham and Warwick contrasted the great ape spinning speeds. They discovered that they were capable of spinning while holding on a rope in the same speed as professional human dancers and circus artists, as well as Dervish Muslims who participate in whirling ceremonies with the aim of achieving spiritual trance.
Dr Marcus Perlman, who is a Lecturer from the Department of English Language and Linguistics of the University of Birmingham co-led the research, and said “We experimented ourselves with spinning at these speeds, and found it difficult to sustain for as long the great apes did in several cases.
“Apes became noticeably dizzy in many of the videos, and they were likely to lose their balance and fall. This would indicate that the primates deliberately keep spinning, despite starting to feel the effects of dizziness, until they are unable to keep their balance any longer.”
He also indicated that spinning is a way the great apes can alter their state of mind and, since these apes have in common with humans the tendency to form such experiences, their discovery gives the tantalizing prospect that they have inherited this drive to receive altered mental states from our evolutionary ancestors.
From the videos analyzed, the primates utilized ropes or vines to spin, which researchers believe made it possible for them to achieve the rapid speeds for such a long period of time. Researchers analyzed the videos and contrasted the apes’ behavior to videos of purposeful human pirouettes, an example they gave was ballet dancing, traditional Hopak dancing, as well as aerial silks performances.
Dr Adriano Lameira, Associate Professor of Psychology from The University of Warwick who co-led the study, says “Every culture has found a way of evading reality through dedicated and special rituals, practices, or ceremonies. This human trait of seeking altered states is so universal, historically, and culturally, that it raises the intriguing possibility that this is something that has been potentially inherited from our evolutionary ancestors.
Prior research had attempted to learn the human motivation for self-inducing dizziness drawing attention to substance use like alcohol or drugs, however it is uncertain if these or other substances were available to human ancestors, either due to those substances being unavailable in their environment or because those people did not have the technical and cultural knowledge to create psychoactive substances according to the researchers making this study more relevant.
The researchers hoped to find out if spinning can be evaluated as a primordial behavior that our human ancestors may have carried out to explore other states of consciousness. If all great apes sort dizziness, it is likely that our ancestors had that possibility as the researchers indicated.
