If you've ever seen a bird flying haphazardly and wondered if it was drunk, you might be right. In fact, more animals may be drunk than scientists previously thought.
A new study published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution The journal describes how researchers studied ethanol consumption in animals and its prevalence among various species today. “Anecdotes of vertebrates consuming ethanol are common, but few have been confirmed and described in the academic literature,” the team wrote in the paper.
The goal was to determine how much ethanol the animals consumed from naturally fermented fruits, which typically contain one to two percent alcohol by volume. However, stronger ones have been found in more tropical regions.
“We are moving away from the anthropocentric view that ethanol is something only humans use,” Kimberley Hockings, senior author of the study, said in a statement. “It is much more abundant in the natural world than we previously thought, and most animals that eat sugary fruits will be exposed to some ethanol.”
But the way animals use it to get “intoxicated,” so to speak, is very different from ours.
“From an ecological perspective, it is not advantageous to get drunk while climbing trees or surrounded by predators at night. This is a recipe for your genes not to be passed on,” senior author Matthew Carrigan said. “This is the opposite of humans who want to get drunk but don't really want calories. From a non-human perspective, animals want calories, not intoxication.”
More research is needed to determine whether animals intentionally consume ethanol to feel intoxicated. It turns out that there is no need for a horse to enter the bar; it just needed some fermented fruit.