CLAIM: Sea turtles can get high by eating jellyfish, similar to how marijuana intoxicates humans.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. Jellyfish do not contain properties that would result in sea turtles becoming high when indulging in the gelatinous marine animal, experts told The Associated Press. In addition, leatherbacks, one of seven sea turtle species, exist on a diet primarily of jellyfish and it would not be advantageous to their existence for their main food source to impair them.
THE FACTS: A frequently repeated online rumor that sea turtles are living the high seas life has surfaced again on social media.
A screenshot of a Google search asks: “do jellyfish make Turtles High.” The search is followed by a result that talks about a sea turtle character in the 2003 animated film “Finding Nemo.”
“Did you know that Crush is portrayed “high” because Sea Turtles actually eat jellyfish and the poisons inside the jelly doesn’t actually harm the turtle but instead intoxicates them much like marijuana does for humans,” the search result states.
As of Friday, the post had received more than 145,000 likes. Another Instagram post sharing the screenshot had received nearly 14,000 likes.
But experts told the AP that there is no indication sea turtles seek out a marijuana-like high from jellyfish.
Monty Graham, a jellyfish expert who is the director of the Florida Institute of Oceanography at the University of South Florida, explained that jellyfish do not contain the properties of marijuana that allow the drug’s users to become intoxicated.
He said that the venom from some jellyfish could theoretically “impact the blood chemistry” of sea turtles who don’t usually eat them, but that a sea turtle seeking out a recreational, marijuana-like high doesn’t seem “plausible.”
David Godfrey, executive director of the Sea Turtle Conservancy, agreed that this scenario isn’t likely.
“I’ve never heard this in my 30 years working with sea turtles and have no evidence to support or refute this notion,” he wrote in an email. “My guess is that it’s not based in reality.”
Godfrey further explained in a phone call that in the case of leatherback sea turtles, for whom jellyfish are the main part of their diet, it would be “counterproductive to survival” if they got intoxicated from eating jellyfish.
“Unless this particular turtle lives its life stoned, it doesn’t make sense that it would be something that gets it high,” he said.
While sea turtles have the same receptors as humans do that allow for marijuana’s psychotropic effects, there is no research that proves whether a sea turtle would actually achieve a marijuana-like high if it came in contact with the drug or THC, the main psychoactive substance in marijuana.
“I would not be surprised, if you were to give THC to a reptile, like a turtle, that there would be some action that would happen,” said Dr. Robert Silver, a retired veterinarian who authored a 2019 paper on the endocannabinoid system of animals, which contain the receptors responsible for marijuana-like highs.
As for Crush, the sea turtle from “Finding Nemo,” the illustrator who brought him to life told the AP that he doesn’t recall being given instructions to create a character who was high.
“It was a long time ago, but from what I remember I don’t believe the character descriptions I received ever actually stated that the turtle was high,” Carter Goodrich, who designed Crush based on direction from the companies behind the film, Disney and Pixar, wrote in an email. “He was described as a ‘laid back surfer dude’ type, if memory serves.”
However, Goodrich also pointed out that “laid back surfer dude” is “kind of analogous to being high.”
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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.
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