Peyote Plants

1. Overview

A peyote plant is a collectible you eat to become an animal and wander inside a hallucination. There are 27 of them across San Andreas, and Michael, Franklin, or Trevor can eat them.

They are not on PS3 or Xbox 360, and they were first added on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, then carried over to PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

Go near a plant and you hear an animal call that echoes. The sound is a clue to both where the plant is and which animal you will become. It is easy to mix it up with a real animal living nearby, so do not trust the sound alone and search with the location list.

By where they sit, the plants split into 15 on land, 6 in the air, and 6 underwater. Air plants are often high up, such as a mountaintop or a rooftop, and underwater plants take a dive to reach.

2. How to eat one and transform

Stand in front of a plant and a prompt appears on screen, and pressing the interact key (PC: E) plays a short cutscene. The protagonist kneels, breaks off a piece of the plant, eats it, and collapses, and the screen ripples in color and then turns white. When you come to, you move in the body of a randomly chosen animal.

During the hallucination you still hear the protagonist's voice. They keep muttering in amazement at the animal they became, and the lines are prepared differently for each character.

3. Moving as an animal

Birds fly through the sky, and every bird except the chicken drops droppings with the attack button.
If the droppings hit a car, the car alarm can go off.
Four-legged animals such as dogs and cats bark or cry with the horn button.
As a fish, a shark, or a stingray, the horn button only plays the sound of the protagonist flailing in the water. Dolphins and killer whales are the exception.
As an animal you cannot pick up a single thing, such as a weapon, a briefcase, or money a pedestrian dropped. You can only look around a sunken wreck, and you cannot take anything from it.
Residents and the police react the same as usual.
Walk up to a gang and they talk to you, and if you bother them they shoot.
A pedestrian who survives being attacked may stand and fight instead of running away.
Kill someone, or block their way and harass them until they report it, and the police respond. Fly a bird over a restricted area and you get a wanted level.
A wild animal can attack you, and you can die.

4. Ending the hallucination

If the animal dies or falls in the water, the hallucination ends on its own. To end it when you want, hold the interact key.

The protagonist wakes near the plant they ate, mimics flapping or crawling on all fours for a moment, and then comes to their senses. Any wanted level picked up during the hallucination is cleared then. The car you arrived in is often left nearby, repaired, but that is not always the case.

5. Animals you can become

You cannot choose which animal you become. Once you transform into them, the 21 species other than the underwater animals unlock as animal actors in Director Mode.

7 dogs: Border Collie, Husky, Labrador Retriever, Poodle, Pug, Rottweiler, West Highland Terrier
6 birds: chicken, hawk, cormorant, crow, pigeon, seagull
8 land mammals: boar, cat, cow, coyote, deer, mountain lion, pig, rabbit
6 underwater animals: dolphin, fish, killer whale, hammerhead shark, tiger shark, stingray
Special: Bigfoot, and you transform only when you eat a golden peyote plant

6. Rewards and achievements

Eat all 21 plants except the underwater ones and every animal you can control unlocks, and you get the achievement Cryptozoologist. The achievement score is 50 points, and the trophy rank is silver. The 6 underwater plants have nothing to do with this achievement.

The first time you pick an unlocked animal as an actor and enter Director Mode, the achievement Animal Lover follows. This one is a bronze trophy worth 10 points.

7. Golden peyote plants and the beast hunt

This is a hidden extra added in the September 2015 update. Finish Franklin's Strangers and Freaks mission The Last One, which opens after you complete the game 100%, and eat all 27 regular plants, and the golden peyote plants appear.

There are 7 golden peyote plants, one place for each day of the week. They show themselves only between 5:30 and 8 in the morning, in-game, and only when it is snowing or foggy. You have to eat them in order from the Sunday plant through the Saturday plant, and every location is in Blaine County.

Sunday: Chiliad Mountain State Wilderness
Monday: Raton Canyon
Tuesday: Raton Canyon
Wednesday: Mount Chiliad
Thursday: Alamo Sea
Friday: Mount Chiliad
Saturday: Grapeseed

Eat a golden peyote plant and you become Bigfoot. Bigfoot moves almost exactly like a human character, drives cars, and picks up dropped weapons, and he is stronger. Each time you transform, one corpse of an animal or a person is left nearby. Eat through the Saturday plant and the beast hunt continues in this order.

Wake up after the Saturday plant and the hunter you met in The Last One is dead right beside you.
Growl in this state and a howl answers from far away. Go toward the sound and corpses are laid out in a line along the way.
Follow the corpses and you come to Thomson Scrapyard. Inside the scrapyard you can no longer growl.
Approach the last corpse beside the small shack and the camera pans over the plane wreck, and the Beast jumps down and the fight starts.
Take the Beast down and the hallucination ends on its own, and Bigfoot and the Beast are added as actors in Director Mode.

8. Location list

Each location has a number, and the parentheses show the plant type. Unlike the golden plants, the regular plants have no set order to eat them in.

Video 0:23, 1 (underwater): underwater east of Los Santos International Airport. Between the airport warehouses and the Port of Los Santos
Video 2:02, 2 (land): El Burro Heights. Beside a parking area overlooking the south coast, south of the road
Video 3:51, 3 (land): west of Los Santos Customs on Greenwich Parkway near Los Santos International Airport, beside a bus wreck
Video 5:05, 4 (land): Chamberlain Hills. Beside the batting cages at the baseball field of the BJ Smith Recreation Center
Video 6:26, 5 (underwater): underwater at the end of Del Perro Pier
Video 8:28, 6 (air): Vespucci Beach. The rooftop pool balcony of the Venetian Hotel
Video 9:50, 7 (land): Mirror Park. The back porch of a new house south of the Nikola Place development
Video 11:13, 8 (air): a small island in the sea east of the NOOSE headquarters
Video 12:54, 9 (air): West Vinewood. The top-floor balcony of the Gentry Manor Hotel
Video 14:17, 10 (land): Vinewood Hills. East of the Beaver Bush ranger station
Video 15:34, 11 (land): west Vinewood Hills. Beside the storm drain north of the intersection of Hillcrest Avenue and North Sheldon Avenue
Video 17:21, 12 (land): Galileo Park, Vinewood Hills. Just east of the Galileo Observatory tunnel, near a rest stop on the hiking trail
Video 18:59, 13 (land): Two Hoots Falls. Just south of the parking lot
Video 20:13, 14 (underwater): underwater just west of the mouth of the Zancudo River. Near a sunken ferry
Video 22:07, 15 (land): Grand Senora Desert. Just southwest of the alien welcome sign beside a farmhouse, east of the Redwood Lights Track
Video 23:43, 16 (land): the trailer park at the north end of the wind farm
Video 24:49, 17 (land): Grand Senora Desert. Just south of a brown yacht left on land, just west of a dirt road near the desert oil fields
Video 26:40, 18 (land): the valley of Mount Josiah, just north of Fort Zancudo
Video 29:10, 19 (underwater): deep underwater just east of Humane Labs. Among the sunken military wreckage, east of a military truck frame
Video 30:10, 20 (land): Mount Gordo. Beside a small lake west of a yoga mat
Video 31:44, 21 (air): the northeast slope of Mount Chiliad
Video 33:51, 22 (land): North Point, Paleto Bay. West of the park bench at the highest point in the middle of the exercise course
Video 35:00, 23 (underwater): offshore from Paleto Bay. Just northeast of a submerged airliner wreck, beside a natural rock arch
Video 36:19, 24 (air): the summit of Mount Chiliad. Southeast of the Bells End sign
Video 37:31, 25 (air): Raton Canyon. On a tall rock north of Cassidy Creek
Video 39:01, 26 (underwater): underwater at the northwest end of the Alamo Sea
Video 40:55, 27 (land): Raton Canyon. Just south of the East Alamo View overlook

9. Things to watch for

For 19 and 23, it is better to go in wearing a wetsuit.
Sharks swim around the island where 8 is. Do not swim across, and take a boat.
6 can be reached only by helicopter, and 9 by helicopter or parachute.
An underwater plant sometimes fails to spawn, and turning the game off and back on brings it back.
An eaten plant does not grow back until you have eaten all 27. A bug can also keep only the animal sound playing at a spot you already ate, so if you hear it and the plant is not there, move on to the next location.
If the game autosaves just before you eat a plant, the collapse cutscene is rarely skipped and you do not transform. The plant still counts as eaten, and that animal unlocks in Director Mode.