You OK, honey? Bear worse for wear after gorging on hallucinogenic treat

A disorientated bear cub who got high after gorging on “mad honey” had to be rescued in northwest Turkey.

The young brown bear binged on an excessive amount of deli bal, or “mad honey”, a type made by bees from rhododendron flowers.

Visibly intoxicated and disoriented, the animal was found in a stupor on the side of a mountain and then loaded into the back of a pick-up truck in Duzce province, on Turkey’s Black Sea coast.

Footage showed the six-month-old bear rolling its head and whimpering as it sat in the back of the truck. It was treated by a vet in a local town earlier this week.

Initially, it was exhausted and barely able to move, said Mevlut Sanli Simsek, an official with Turkey’s Nature Conservation and National Parks department. However, its condition soon improved.

“Our teams brought her to the veterinarian, where we started the treatment process. She is in very good health. We plan to release her back to her natural environment when she regains her health,” he told the Anadolu news agency.

Murat Unlu, a vet, said: “The bear is much better compared to the day she first came. She can eat and walk. Hopefully, when the bear regains her health completely in the coming days, we will leave her with her mother.”

A few species of rhododendron bushes contain a substance called grayanotoxin, which can cause dramatic reactions in both animals and humans, from hallucinations and dizziness to temporary paralysis and the slowing of the heartbeat.

‘Mad honey’ an ancient scourge for humans

One of the earliest accounts of humans eating mad honey comes from the Greek soldier and philosopher Xenophon, who recounted how it was consumed by Greek soldiers in 401 BC as they marched through ancient Anatolia, now part of modern-day Turkey.

They became disoriented, could not stand up and vomited, he wrote, although none of them died.

“Those who had eaten a little were like people exceedingly drunk, while those who had eaten a great deal seemed like crazy, or even, in some cases, dying men,” Xenophon wrote.

A Roman army led by Pompey the Great also fell victim to the effects of mad honey during an invasion along the Black Sea in 67 BC.

Mad honey is sold commercially in many parts of the world and is available in most states of the US. Most of it is sourced from Turkey and Nepal.

One leading website selling the substance said on its website: “This 100 per cent organic product has numerous properties that people all over the world have enjoyed for many centuries.”

The company warned, however, that it is “important to control the dosage” because of the hallucinogenic compounds found in the honey.

Bear-naming competition

Turkey’s ministry of agriculture invited people on Twitter to come up with a name for the bear.

The brown bear, ursus arctos, is the largest carnivore found in Turkey and a protected species.

They are found in mountains and forests along the Black Sea and in eastern Anatolia. The species is threatened by hunting and the fragmentation of its habitat.