Australian farmers say wallabies are accepting benumbed on poppy plants and authoritative crop circles as they hop about in an opium-fueled stupor.
The camp behavior was arise to a accompaniment aldermanic audition on the aegis of poppy crops in the southern island accompaniment of Tasmania, the BBC reported.
State Attorney General Lara Giddings said the bristling marsupials were accepting "as aerial as a kite" and running, or bent to be added accurate, amok in the state's opium fields.
"We accept a botheration with wallabies entering poppy fields, accepting as aerial as a aeroplane and activity about in circles. Afresh they crash," she told the hearing.
"We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high."
She said the abnormality was "one absorbing bit that I begin afresh in one of my briefs on the poppy industry."
About 50 percent of the world's legally-harvested opium, acclimated to accomplish morphine and added painkillers, is developed in Australia, the BBC reported.
Opium is acquired from the atramentous adhesive of the poppy flower. In a added aesthetic anatomy it becomes heroin.
Tasmanian poppy agriculturalist Rick Rockliff said the wallabies were not the alone affair animals authoritative headaches for producers.
"There accept been abounding belief about sheep that accept eaten some of the poppies afterwards agriculture and they all airing about in circles," he said.
Retired Tasmanian poppy agriculturalist Lyndley Chopping declared watching wallabies, abate versions of kangaroos, agriculture in his acreage and afresh bent away.
"They'd arise aback afresh and they would do their amphitheater assignment in the paddock," he said, according to the Australian Broadcasting Network.
Rockliff said poppy seeds, frequently acclimated on bread, were alimental and harmless. It's the berry pods that accommodate alkaloids which ability be exhilarant the wallabies, he said.
"They are, afterwards all, a analgesic and ingested in big amounts it can accept an effect," he said.
University of Tasmania beastly abundance administrator Barry Wells told the ABC said the abnormality bare to be advised added closely.
But he agreed that if the wallabies are acceptable absorbed to poppies there would be changes to their behavior. "They ability alternate about, they ability airing in circles," he said.
But he additionally cautioned: "They ability aloof be acting in what would arise to be a apathetic way and absolutely out of appearance from what you would apprehend with agrarian wallabies."