June 11, 2025 • 30 mins
Which animals like to booze it up? Jorge takes a swig of science with animal expert Katie Goldin to find out.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, welcome to Science Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. I'm
Hoore Cham and today we are asking the question to
animals like drinking alcohol. Are humans the only species that
enjoy a stiff drink or are there other organisms on
earth that like to get a little tipsy. Sometimes it
turns out that there are some benefits out there in
(00:20):
the wild to hit the sauce, and some of it
might be in our genes. So raise your glasses and
take a shot of signs with us as we find
out if animals like drinking alcohol. Bottoms up. Hey everyone,
(00:42):
all right, I'm not a big drinker or an animal expert,
but fortunately I do know someone who is at least
one of those things. To answer today's question, I brought
back my friend Katie Golden. Katie's a biologist and animal
expert and the host of the podcast Creature Feature. She
did a deep dive for us on this topic, looking
(01:02):
at everything from drunk elephants do fruit fly beer goggles.
So here's my chat with Katie Golden. All right, Katie,
thanks so much for being on the show.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I am so excited to talk about this. You can't
even believe I've been having such a blast reading studies
about this. It's so fun.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Oh yeah, you're drunk on information.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
I really am. I find it intoxicating. Education is intoxicating.
Why is that not a slogan for schools.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Well, now that we have a new Health and Human
Services secretary, maybe he'll get on it.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Hey, you know what, it sounds like something they do.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
So today we're answering the question do animals like drinking alcohol?
And then made me wonder if your dog Cookie?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Right?
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yes, if Cookie has been hitting the sauce lately.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
If by sauce you mean jerky treats, I got her yes.
If by sauce you mean do I give my dog alcohol? No,
I have enough problems.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Cookie has enough problems.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, but alcohol einate one. Yeah. No, She's perfectly happy
to receive dog type foods.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
So what do you think, Katie? Do animals like drinking alcohol?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
The short answer is yes and moderation. The longer answer
is it depends on the animal's diet and that animals
drink ethanol, which is nature's version of alcohol, both intentionally
and accidentally.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Can you maybe give us some examples in nature of
animals who might have a little problem with the bottle?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah? Absolutely, In general, animals that are going to eat
things like fruits or nectar or are omnivorous are more
likely to drink alcohol. Animals that are carnivores or insectivores
who have a completely different diet are probably going to
be less attracted to alcohol.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Unless maybe you're a carnivore that accidentally eats a drunk animal.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Right, that's a good point. That is a very good point.
Po who likes their prey marinated in a bit of wine?
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Okay, So Kate cast lots of examples in nature of
animals drinking alcohol, from civets in Southeast Asia, do monkeys
in Africa, to fruit flies, but first she wanted to
talk about the myth that sometimes elephants get drunk eating
fermented fruits.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
So there's a lot of interesting ideas about animals drinking alcohol,
and a lot of misconceptions actually came from this famous
nineteen seventy four documentary, kind of putting in quotes because
it's more of an entertainment movie. It was called Animals
or Beautiful People.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
What did this movie show?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
The movie was an attempt to kind of humanize animals,
to show a lot of interesting animal behavior. It's actually
not a bad concept for a movie, and it was
certainly very interesting at the time right where it focused
on sub Saharan Africa and these grasslands and a lot
of the animal behavior here, So it was a really
interesting kind of view for people into the world of
(04:04):
animals that maybe they've never seen except at a zoo.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
So the movie shows these elephants like stumbling, yeah, like
lying down, real what drunk behavior for an elepantting.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Trunks around each other. I love you, man, No, I
love you man, You're the best. So what it showed
was a bunch of elephants. I think there were also
some baboons and other animals kind of languidly staggering around
a tree with all these fruit on the ground. But
the problem was the kind of playing fast and loose
(04:34):
with the truth there, right. The actual footage of these
animals stumbling around drunk was absolutely staged, particularly the elephants.
So it's thought what they did was they either soaked
the fruit in alcohol so that they would be more potent,
or they may have even administered some kind of tranquilizer
to the elephants to get them to act drunk. The
(04:58):
idea that the elephants could get drunk on these were
fermented fruit from a marula tree. It doesn't check out.
So there was actually a research paper that looked into
this and tried to figure out whether or not an
elephant could get drunk on these fermented fruit.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Wait, a research paper about a movie about elephant, a research.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Paper about the myth that elephants could get drunk eating
fermented fruit. The papers called myth Maroula and Elephant, an
Assessment of voluntary ethanol intoxication of the African Elephant following
feeding on the fruit of the Marula tree. Because this
is something even though this movie came out in nineteen
seventy four, I have actually seen claims made about this
(05:39):
on the internet today that elephants can get drunk eating
fermented fruit. These researchers took the time to actually work
out how much an elephant would have to have of
this fruit to get drunk. They summarized that a three
thousand kilogram elephant, like a normal sized elephant, would need
to quickly drink about ten to twenty five liters of
(06:00):
seven percent ethanol to get just timpsy. What, that's a
lot of alcohol that would kill you? Like if we
tried to do that, we would die. That would be
a ridiculous amount of alcohol. These fermented fruit might generously
contain about three percent ethanol, and normal feeding behavior for
the elephants would result in only have the ethanol required
(06:23):
to even get a little tipsy. So very unlikely. But
it's not just the sketchy documentary that made this claim
about elephants getting drunk. There's actually a lot of locals
talking about elephants acting strange around marolla trees and getting
more aggressive. So the idea was that, hey, we know
(06:43):
that these fruit can sometimes be fermented, and elephants eat
the fruit, so maybe they're getting angry drunk, right, they're
getting ornery, But given that that doesn't really work out
in terms of how much alcohol they're consuming, it's more
likely that they're just aggressive because they really like to
eat the fruit. Maybe it's a really high value dietary resource,
and they're getting angry rather than getting drunk, so they're
(07:07):
being defensive of the fruit. Another theory, actually really weird one.
This has not been proven, it's but it's something that
is possible, is that it's not the fruit that the
elephants are getting intoxicated from, but the bark of the trees,
so they often strip the bark and consume it. The
bark itself is not toxic, and it's not it wouldn't
(07:29):
cause anebriation. But there are these larva of a toxic
beetle called Damphidia that pupit in the bark. And there
is this hypothesis that the elephants might actually be getting high,
not drunk, from these toxins found in the beetles.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Which is wild, right.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
So you see this observation of elephants acting really weird
and aggressive around these trees, but it has nothing to
do maybe with the fruit. It could have something to
do with these beetle larvae. This has not been proven.
This is a theory. I have no idea how you
attest this in any ethical way. Give a bunch of
toxic beetles to an elephant and see if it goes
on a rampaging bender.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
I don't know, or I'm surprised the locals haven't tried
the beetles themselves.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
They have been used by humans. These beetles have been
used for poisoning arrows and weapons. That's part of the
reason we know about them.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
I see it's supportent toxic.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
I can't in good conscience tell anyone to try these larvae.
I think that might be bad for you.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Well that might be our next episode with you, is
the animals like getting high? Yes, yes, well you said
the ethanol comes from the fruity. So what's going on,
Like the fruit falls and then rots and turns into alcohol.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Essentially, So it's not necessarily rotting. The fermentation process happens
because yeast is naturally occurring little organism that can be
in the air or find itself on the fruit, and
it will break down the sugars and the fruit. And
the byproduct of this yeast breaking down the sugars and
the fruit is ethanol. Same way we brew beer, any
(09:02):
kind of alcohol wine, you have some source of sugar,
you have yeast, You have this breakdown of the sugars,
and it turns into ethanol and we can drink that
byproduct the little bacterial or the little yeast poops that
they are creating. So that's the same thing that happens
with fruit. There's actually this really interesting thing that happens
with berries when winter is transitioning to summer. So you
(09:25):
have these sort of frozen berries that are on trees,
and they are being preserved so they're not completely rotting
or shriveling. But as it gets warmer and sunnier, they
start to ripen. They start to be more exposed such
that yeast can get to work and they can ferment,
but there's still relatively frozen, so they stay fresh and
(09:46):
they stay on the tree. So a lot of birds,
particularly these overwintering birds like wax wings, will eat these berries,
not necessarily expecting them to be essentially a little tiny
bird size jello shots, and then they get really drunk
and it can be bad for them. There's actually in
the Yukon these birds called Bohemian waxwings. They're really beautiful.
(10:09):
They will get drunk so frequently on these berries that
local wildlife rehabilitation centers have these bird drunk tanks where
they take the birds in let them sleep it off,
because otherwise they might get in troubled.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Wait, what do you mean like to capture these drunk
birds and put them in a kind of like a
rehab facility.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Exactly, They just slid them to sleep off the booze
and then they re release.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
How do you know if a bird is drunk flies.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Into your window? Sometimes they'll probably see them on the
ground acting confused, kind of stumbling around, you know, much
like a person or inert right, Like, if you can
pick up a bird, that's not a good sign. The
bird's probably sick or possibly drunk.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
I see, Okay, when we come back, Katie's going to
tell us about some animals that do intentionally drink alcohol
and how in fruit flies that can affect their mating habits.
Stay with us, We'll be right back and we're back.
(11:20):
So then, what did that paper conclude?
Speaker 2 (11:23):
That elephants probably do not get drunk on fermented fruit.
They probably eat it quite a bit, but it would
require a huge amount for them to get drunk. It
would be so hard for them to eat that much,
and it would go against what their typical eating behavior is.
And it also require each fruit to contain a pretty
unlikely amount of ethanol in the fruit. So it's very
(11:47):
hard to get an elephant drunk, is what this paper found.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, it's interesting that, of course the Internet would try
to figure out how much alcohloing to get to an
elephant to get it drunk.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Yes, and how many elephants can you drink with before
you get kicked out? Of a bar. That's the cat one.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
How many elephants can you fit in a bar?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Exactly? Would the elephant be the designated driver?
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Well, the good thing is that if you are drunk,
then you can just you know, get in the trunk.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
And I have to say this is probably the first
episode I can get my daughter to listen to because
it features drunk elephant. Yes, which is a very trendy
brand of beauty. Has skincare heard of it?
Speaker 2 (12:27):
I have heard of it?
Speaker 1 (12:29):
All right, Well, what are some other examples of animals
in nature that eat or drink? I'll call Well, a.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Really cute one that I like is this animal called
a palm civet. Now they're called palmsivets or civet cats.
They're actually not cats, and they're not at all related
to felines. They're vivarid's. They're very cute, like a cross
between a fair and a cat. They're very, very cute.
They live in South and Southeast Asia forests, and they're
(12:55):
famous for other reasons. Actually, Kobe Luwak, have you heard
of this? It's where they eat the coffee beans and
it's excreted in their poop. Uh huh, and then people
will say like, well, this is really good coffee because
they know how to put the beans at their perfect
ripeness and then it comes out in their poop.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
I have had Have you had it coffee? Yeah? Yeah,
we were in BALI.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
How is it?
Speaker 1 (13:16):
It was tasty? I mean, I'm not a coffee kind
of sewer, but I mean it definitely felt a little richer, yeah, darker.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
And this is a great example of an animal who's
perfectly in the position to enjoy nature's brew. So this
civic cat is so in love with the taste of
fermented palm sap. They've been nicknamed toddy cats. So yeah,
so the locals would call this a fermented sap toddy
(13:47):
and they noticed that this palm civet would drink it
a lot. They really show this preference for this fermented
palm sap. And that palm sap actually is pretty high
in terms of its alcohol content. It gets up to
about five percent alcohol content. So that's not bad.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
I'd take a beer, right Yeah. And where do they
get it? Does it ferment in the tree itself?
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Yeah? So ferments in these sort of crevices in the palms,
so they can get it like go in. They go
directly in and lap it up. It's actually something that
people can also collect and brew themselves, so you can
get sap from the tree brew it, and when human
beings are doing that, the civets are really attracted to that,
so they'll calm down and kind of hang out with
you and try to get some of the fermented palm
(14:30):
sap that people drink called toddy. Yeah. So there's a
lot of research and one of the leading theories for
why they like this fermented palm sap so much is
that it's very high in calories, so they're not necessarily
going after it because they want to feel the buzz,
although they might actually enjoy the feeling.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yeah, I imagine after a long day, you want to
kick back with the palm like their beer.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Yeah, exactly, grab a beer with your buddies. It's funny
because it's sort of the inverse of humans, like we
like to drink, but we don't like the extra calories.
But for animals, they don't have access to grocery stores
and uber eats, so having something that's really high in
calories means that they have to do less work right.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Right, like getting drunk is an unfortunate side effect for
them or maybe fortunate. Can you tell?
Speaker 2 (15:20):
It depends right. Obviously for the birds we talked about,
that's really bad for them to get drunk. It can
actually hurt them. Some of them can overdose on alcohol
and either get alcohol poisoning and die, or smack into
something and die, or be a nice drunk little treat
for predator.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Okay, The next example Katie told me of animals that'd
like to drink alcohol are tiny fruit flies.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
They're so tiny. I think that fruitflies would be sort
of the opposite of an elephant, Like they have a
little bit of ethanol and they're they're just completely laid out.
Because they're so tiny, they should get drunk really easily.
I love ethanol. So fruitflies, as well as most organisms,
have an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase, or ADH, which can
(16:10):
help turn alcohol into lipids. So we also have a
version of this, as do pretty much most organisms. So
depending on the species of fruit flies, such as those
who lay their eggs on rotting fruit, they may have
the genes for ADH enzymes that produce them that more
efficiently metabolize ethanol. So there are these fruitflies that have
(16:34):
adapted to be more efficient, essentially at drinking, being able
to metabolize ethanol without getting too drunk.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Because they I guess they find it in nature, like
in these fermented fruits.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Maybe exactly, they're fruitflies and they have pretty easy access
to fermented fruit rotting fruit, right, so they lay their
eggs on rotting fruit, so it really helps to be
able to digest this fruit as it's routing.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
I wonder do they still get drunk like insects get drunk.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
That's really interesting. They can actually and it can lower
their inhibitions. There's this really funny study on fruitflies where
they found that. Well, first le me tell you the
name of the study because it's actually pretty funny. It's
sexual deprivation increases ethanol intake in Drosophilia. So when these
(17:21):
fruit flies called dmil and A. Gasters, when they are
rejected by a female, they will consume more ethanol than
the males who are not rejected by the females who
successfully mate with the females.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Okay, this is pretty amazing. In this study, scientists from
the University of California, San Francisco separated two groups of
male fruitflies. One group they would put in an enclosure
with a bunch of version female fruit flies, and they
would just go at it. The other group of male fruitlies, however,
was placed in an enclosure with females that had already
(17:59):
made it, so they would almost all reject the males.
The scientists would do this for days, so one group
of males got to me normally and the other group
would just get rejected all the time. Then the scientist
gave the male fruit flies two options for food, either
normal food, which was just sugar water with yees extract,
(18:23):
or normal food with fifteen percent alcohol, which is about
as strong as a port or a sherry. What the
scientist found was that the male flies that kept getting
rejected would basically drink more alcohol than the male flies
that didn't get rejected. Well, first of all, it's like
(18:44):
they're taking solace in the alcohol because they got rejected.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yes, maybe, I mean it's interesting because the paper was
really looking at sort of this interesting trade off in
terms of reward pathways. Right, So the fly goes out,
it wants to mate, It doesn't get this mating, and
so it's like still kind of looking forward to satiate
this reward pathway in its brain. Then it maybe overindulges
in something else where it's trying to get this sort
(19:08):
of reward, whereas the flies that successfully made it's like
this reward pathway has been satisfied to some degree, so
it doesn't have the need to overindulge in the alcohol.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
I see they're already drunk on love.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Did I need to hit the bottle to feel better?
Speaker 2 (19:23):
I mean, it's very relatable though, even beyond alcohol, right
was humans like when we're stressed or when we're feeling
rejected or something, we might overindulge, not just an alcohol,
but food, sweet, video games, whatever. We kind of like
as like a icee because you know, we still need
to satisfy this reward pathway. But I didn't get it
this way, so I need to get it that way.
(19:44):
So that's one of the theories behind why these poor
fruit flies drink when they're rejected.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
I need to feel good somehow, Yes, exactly. And that's
not the only interesting thing that scientists have found. In
another study titled Recurring ethanol exposure induces disinhibited courtship in Drosophila,
scientists at Penn State University found that alcohol need fruit
flies more aroused and lower their inhibitions.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
So when they drink more ethanol, their inhibitions are lowered.
It increases their arousal while also decreasing their cognitive abilities.
So basically it lowers their standards so they can go
back out there. So it's very human like, right.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
It kind of gives them beer goggles, yeah, seeing it
lowers their.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Standards, lowers their standards.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Yeah, although film flies have like a million eyes, so
you need like a million little beer goggles.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
They have compound eyes sort of like many facets to
their eyes, so you would need very complicated beer goggles.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah, it actually lowers their standards, so they go back
out there with maybe more more confidence.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Go back out there. It lowers their standards also. Females,
it lowers their standards as well.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Yeah, we're relatable to a college campus perhaps, yes, woh.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Interesting, So yes, to answer your question, fruit flies can
get drunk and they do sometimes.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
So yeah, fruit flies seem to have a lot in
common with college students. All right, when we come back,
Katie's going to tell us a few more examples of
animals who like to get tipsy, including what you calls
the best drinker in the animal kingdom. Stay with us,
we'll be right back, and we're back then.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Some animals are actually specifically adapted to be resistant to
getting too drunk because they drink ethanol so much. They
really rely on it as this caloric resource. But if
they got as drunk as they should get by drinking
all of that, they would not be able to function
and it wouldn't do them any goods. So there is
this tree shrew called the pin tailed tree shrew. They're
(22:08):
really really cute. They're found in Thailand, Borneo, and Indonesia
and these dense forests. They're small, they are only about
fifty grams. They look like mice with the really long noses.
They have these little feathery tufts, so they're adorable. They're
really small. They don't really seem like the type to
be a huge party animal out there boozing it up
(22:31):
every night, but they absolutely are. They're one of the
best drinkers in the animal kingdom.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Uh yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
So they drink the nectar of Bertram palm buds, So
this one is like from like an actual bud on
the palm tree, which have an alcohol content of about
three point eight percent, which is similar to a beer,
and they are able to metabolize huge amounts of this
(22:59):
palm bud neck. The amount of alcohol they consume would
be like me drinking, as a sort of average sized woman,
about ten glasses of wine every twelve hours, which yeah,
I couldn't. That would be a definite challenge for.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Me, unless you got rejected at the fruit fly.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Exactly. If I got rejected by a fruitfly, I might
start to drink a bit.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
You would hit ruck bottom, is what you say.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I would.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Yeah, So the true is no shrewe. It likes to
drink it up.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah, it really does. They drink a lot, and they
also have this genetic predisposition for producing adh enzymes that
more efficiently metabolized ethanol. And the interesting thing is that
these tree shrews are probably pretty similar to the common
ancestor of primates. They are not the same. We didn't
(23:50):
descend from these specific species, but there's a probably very
similar tree shrew that primates have as a common ancestor.
And so it's called the drunken monkey hypothesis, which is
that because we all had this common arboreal ancestor that
was probably omnivorous, probably ate a lot of fruits, that
there was an evolutionary predisposition for primates to be able
(24:13):
to metabolize ethanol. Indeed, we do see a lot of
examples of monkeys eating fermented fruit and seeming to have
a bit more of a tolerance for it.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Interesting, so the shrew has it, and so that's maybe
where we got it too right.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Potentially, yes, because.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
We can drink alcohol. Basically, it's not immediately poisonous to.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Us exactly as far as animals go, we're pretty good
at metabolizing alcohol go us. There was actually some research
that found a potential ten million year old mutation of
sort of a primate human common ancestor who may have
had a genetic mutation somewhere in this genome that had
(24:57):
a more profound production of the alcohol metabolizing enzyme.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
And so, with this true, do you know if it
affects their behavior?
Speaker 2 (25:06):
That's a really good question. I don't think it does
seem to affect them too strongly. They drink it so
frequently that who knows what they would be like sober.
But no, they function quite well even while drinking.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
They're either always drunk or they don't get drunk.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Right, It's not sort of like the fruitfly situation where
you see the fruit fly. It is suddenly going like,
all right, anyone wanted to come home with me. But
it's interesting because in monkeys, certain primates do seem to
have a preference for drinking socially, potentially when they're younger.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Really there's so much there. Monkeys drink socially, so.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Invervet monkeys, when they are introduced to a situation where
they can drink alcohol, they're very happy to drink it.
But there's a social species of primates, so there might
be something to the alcohol helping to lower inhibitions, you know,
just like in humans. One of the interesting things that
my point to that is the juveniles drink it more
than the adults.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
What are these monkeys and how are they getting the alcohol?
Speaker 2 (26:09):
I don't think they genterally drink alcohol in their natural environment,
but when they were introduced to areas where they could
have sugarcane, I believe, or if they're given in a
research situation like a sugar water mixed with some alcohol,
they'll drink it. In this case, researchers were actually providing them, hey, monkey,
(26:30):
would you like to drink something, and then seeing whether
they had that preference for drinking alcohol. That was offered
to them by people.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Oh, I see, it was sort of like what happens
if you introduce alcohol to a group of human like animals.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Exactly exactly. The study is called Voluntary Alcohol Consumption and
Verbant Monkeys individual sex and age differences. So they are
looking specifically to see like if there's some sort of difference,
and they found the juveniles like to drink more. Whoa,
the juveniles have less of a responsibility in terms of
their social organization, so maybe for them it's like they
(27:05):
can kind of let loose. They can drink a lot,
but the adults rein it in a little bit. One
of the hypotheses is that they may enjoy the social
effects of the alcohol, but for the adults that have
more responsibility in terms of maintaining sort of order in
the vervet society, they might drink less because of that.
It's also interesting females actually drink more. The female vervet
(27:28):
monkeys like to drink more.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Whoa, the females would drink more alcohol than the males.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Yeah, they showed a stronger preference for the alcohol as
well as and juveniles would show a stronger preference. So
if you combine that teen girls, teen girl, monkeys love
the alcohol of us. I don't know if that's how
that worked out in the study in terms of the
mouth of it, but yeah, the juveniles seem to drink
more and the females also seem to drink more.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Wow. I wonder what the proposal for this study was, Like, Hey,
give us money, so we can give all culture a
bunch of monkeys and then see what happens.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Well, I'm looking forward to starting my own beauty brand,
either called drunk monkey or maybe drunk fruit fly.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Drunk fruit fly, drunk monkey, not drunken civit palms Asian palm,
civit cat, maybe a little bit too much.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
So what else did you learn from this paper? The
evolutionary ecology of ethanol?
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Yeah, so that's really interesting because this was like a
review of a bunch of different studies, and the authors
of this paper seem to think that it is a
lot more common than we realized. That animals intentionally sinking
out ethanol is probably relatively common when the stars aligned,
so to speak. Right, But animals who are in the
(28:43):
premium circumstances for fermented foods, like maybe flying insects, omnivorous
animals frugivores, nectivorous animals, those that have access to sugars.
They seem to think that because we do have this
ability to produce this enzyme, that the intentional seeking out
of ethanol is potentially more common than we know. There's
(29:06):
probably some evolutionary pressure for them to develop a higher
tolerance for ethanol because you need a lot of calories
really fast, and so if you can metabolize ethanol really efficiently,
like a fruit fly or a pintailed true can, then
you're going to get a lot of high efficiency nutrition
really quickly.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
So then I guess the answer to the question do
animals like drinking alcohol? The answer is yes, but they
do it for the calories, not for the buzz.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Mostly for the calories. It seems perhaps primates may also
enjoy it for a social context, like we talked about
with the vervet monkeys, but seems mostly for animals, getting
those calories are what they want, and then the buzz
is either a pleasant or unpleasant side effect. So it's
kind of it's the opposite of people, right, like we
(29:55):
want the buzz without the calories. For animals, they want
the calories with maybe a little buzz, but not.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Too much right, right, unless you're a fruit fly, in
which case you technically buzz all the time exactly.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Well, they really enjoy those calories, but then if they
get rejected, then they're doing it for the uh Misery
Loves company at their little tiny fruit fly bar.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Katie. Yeah, absolutely, thanks
for joining us. See you next Wednesday. You've been listening
to Science Stuff production of iHeartRadio, written and produced by
me Or Hitcham, edited by Rose Seguda, executive producer Jerry Rowland,
and audio engineer and mixer Kasey Pegram, and you can
(30:40):
follow me on social media. Just search for PhD Comics
in the name of your favorite platform. Be sure to
subscribe to sign Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell your friends
we'll be back next Wednesday with another episode.
Hey, welcome to Science Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. I'm
Hoore Cham and today we are asking the question to
animals like drinking alcohol. Are humans the only species that
enjoy a stiff drink or are there other organisms on
earth that like to get a little tipsy. Sometimes it
turns out that there are some benefits out there in
(00:20):
the wild to hit the sauce, and some of it
might be in our genes. So raise your glasses and
take a shot of signs with us as we find
out if animals like drinking alcohol. Bottoms up. Hey everyone,
(00:42):
all right, I'm not a big drinker or an animal expert,
but fortunately I do know someone who is at least
one of those things. To answer today's question, I brought
back my friend Katie Golden. Katie's a biologist and animal
expert and the host of the podcast Creature Feature. She
did a deep dive for us on this topic, looking
(01:02):
at everything from drunk elephants do fruit fly beer goggles.
So here's my chat with Katie Golden. All right, Katie,
thanks so much for being on the show.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I am so excited to talk about this. You can't
even believe I've been having such a blast reading studies
about this. It's so fun.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Oh yeah, you're drunk on information.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
I really am. I find it intoxicating. Education is intoxicating.
Why is that not a slogan for schools.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Well, now that we have a new Health and Human
Services secretary, maybe he'll get on it.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Hey, you know what, it sounds like something they do.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
So today we're answering the question do animals like drinking alcohol?
And then made me wonder if your dog Cookie?
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Right?
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yes, if Cookie has been hitting the sauce lately.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
If by sauce you mean jerky treats, I got her yes.
If by sauce you mean do I give my dog alcohol? No,
I have enough problems.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Cookie has enough problems.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, but alcohol einate one. Yeah. No, She's perfectly happy
to receive dog type foods.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
So what do you think, Katie? Do animals like drinking alcohol?
Speaker 2 (02:10):
The short answer is yes and moderation. The longer answer
is it depends on the animal's diet and that animals
drink ethanol, which is nature's version of alcohol, both intentionally
and accidentally.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Can you maybe give us some examples in nature of
animals who might have a little problem with the bottle?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah? Absolutely, In general, animals that are going to eat
things like fruits or nectar or are omnivorous are more
likely to drink alcohol. Animals that are carnivores or insectivores
who have a completely different diet are probably going to
be less attracted to alcohol.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Unless maybe you're a carnivore that accidentally eats a drunk animal.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Right, that's a good point. That is a very good point.
Po who likes their prey marinated in a bit of wine?
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Okay, So Kate cast lots of examples in nature of
animals drinking alcohol, from civets in Southeast Asia, do monkeys
in Africa, to fruit flies, but first she wanted to
talk about the myth that sometimes elephants get drunk eating
fermented fruits.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
So there's a lot of interesting ideas about animals drinking alcohol,
and a lot of misconceptions actually came from this famous
nineteen seventy four documentary, kind of putting in quotes because
it's more of an entertainment movie. It was called Animals
or Beautiful People.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
What did this movie show?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
The movie was an attempt to kind of humanize animals,
to show a lot of interesting animal behavior. It's actually
not a bad concept for a movie, and it was
certainly very interesting at the time right where it focused
on sub Saharan Africa and these grasslands and a lot
of the animal behavior here, So it was a really
interesting kind of view for people into the world of
(04:04):
animals that maybe they've never seen except at a zoo.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
So the movie shows these elephants like stumbling, yeah, like
lying down, real what drunk behavior for an elepantting.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Trunks around each other. I love you, man, No, I
love you man, You're the best. So what it showed
was a bunch of elephants. I think there were also
some baboons and other animals kind of languidly staggering around
a tree with all these fruit on the ground. But
the problem was the kind of playing fast and loose
(04:34):
with the truth there, right. The actual footage of these
animals stumbling around drunk was absolutely staged, particularly the elephants.
So it's thought what they did was they either soaked
the fruit in alcohol so that they would be more potent,
or they may have even administered some kind of tranquilizer
to the elephants to get them to act drunk. The
(04:58):
idea that the elephants could get drunk on these were
fermented fruit from a marula tree. It doesn't check out.
So there was actually a research paper that looked into
this and tried to figure out whether or not an
elephant could get drunk on these fermented fruit.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Wait, a research paper about a movie about elephant, a research.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Paper about the myth that elephants could get drunk eating
fermented fruit. The papers called myth Maroula and Elephant, an
Assessment of voluntary ethanol intoxication of the African Elephant following
feeding on the fruit of the Marula tree. Because this
is something even though this movie came out in nineteen
seventy four, I have actually seen claims made about this
(05:39):
on the internet today that elephants can get drunk eating
fermented fruit. These researchers took the time to actually work
out how much an elephant would have to have of
this fruit to get drunk. They summarized that a three
thousand kilogram elephant, like a normal sized elephant, would need
to quickly drink about ten to twenty five liters of
(06:00):
seven percent ethanol to get just timpsy. What, that's a
lot of alcohol that would kill you? Like if we
tried to do that, we would die. That would be
a ridiculous amount of alcohol. These fermented fruit might generously
contain about three percent ethanol, and normal feeding behavior for
the elephants would result in only have the ethanol required
(06:23):
to even get a little tipsy. So very unlikely. But
it's not just the sketchy documentary that made this claim
about elephants getting drunk. There's actually a lot of locals
talking about elephants acting strange around marolla trees and getting
more aggressive. So the idea was that, hey, we know
(06:43):
that these fruit can sometimes be fermented, and elephants eat
the fruit, so maybe they're getting angry drunk, right, they're
getting ornery, But given that that doesn't really work out
in terms of how much alcohol they're consuming, it's more
likely that they're just aggressive because they really like to
eat the fruit. Maybe it's a really high value dietary resource,
and they're getting angry rather than getting drunk, so they're
(07:07):
being defensive of the fruit. Another theory, actually really weird one.
This has not been proven, it's but it's something that
is possible, is that it's not the fruit that the
elephants are getting intoxicated from, but the bark of the trees,
so they often strip the bark and consume it. The
bark itself is not toxic, and it's not it wouldn't
(07:29):
cause anebriation. But there are these larva of a toxic
beetle called Damphidia that pupit in the bark. And there
is this hypothesis that the elephants might actually be getting high,
not drunk, from these toxins found in the beetles.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Which is wild, right.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
So you see this observation of elephants acting really weird
and aggressive around these trees, but it has nothing to
do maybe with the fruit. It could have something to
do with these beetle larvae. This has not been proven.
This is a theory. I have no idea how you
attest this in any ethical way. Give a bunch of
toxic beetles to an elephant and see if it goes
on a rampaging bender.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
I don't know, or I'm surprised the locals haven't tried
the beetles themselves.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
They have been used by humans. These beetles have been
used for poisoning arrows and weapons. That's part of the
reason we know about them.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
I see it's supportent toxic.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
I can't in good conscience tell anyone to try these larvae.
I think that might be bad for you.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Well that might be our next episode with you, is
the animals like getting high? Yes, yes, well you said
the ethanol comes from the fruity. So what's going on,
Like the fruit falls and then rots and turns into alcohol.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Essentially, So it's not necessarily rotting. The fermentation process happens
because yeast is naturally occurring little organism that can be
in the air or find itself on the fruit, and
it will break down the sugars and the fruit. And
the byproduct of this yeast breaking down the sugars and
the fruit is ethanol. Same way we brew beer, any
(09:02):
kind of alcohol wine, you have some source of sugar,
you have yeast, You have this breakdown of the sugars,
and it turns into ethanol and we can drink that
byproduct the little bacterial or the little yeast poops that
they are creating. So that's the same thing that happens
with fruit. There's actually this really interesting thing that happens
with berries when winter is transitioning to summer. So you
(09:25):
have these sort of frozen berries that are on trees,
and they are being preserved so they're not completely rotting
or shriveling. But as it gets warmer and sunnier, they
start to ripen. They start to be more exposed such
that yeast can get to work and they can ferment,
but there's still relatively frozen, so they stay fresh and
(09:46):
they stay on the tree. So a lot of birds,
particularly these overwintering birds like wax wings, will eat these berries,
not necessarily expecting them to be essentially a little tiny
bird size jello shots, and then they get really drunk
and it can be bad for them. There's actually in
the Yukon these birds called Bohemian waxwings. They're really beautiful.
(10:09):
They will get drunk so frequently on these berries that
local wildlife rehabilitation centers have these bird drunk tanks where
they take the birds in let them sleep it off,
because otherwise they might get in troubled.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
Wait, what do you mean like to capture these drunk
birds and put them in a kind of like a
rehab facility.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Exactly, They just slid them to sleep off the booze
and then they re release.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
How do you know if a bird is drunk flies.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Into your window? Sometimes they'll probably see them on the
ground acting confused, kind of stumbling around, you know, much
like a person or inert right, Like, if you can
pick up a bird, that's not a good sign. The
bird's probably sick or possibly drunk.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
I see, Okay, when we come back, Katie's going to
tell us about some animals that do intentionally drink alcohol
and how in fruit flies that can affect their mating habits.
Stay with us, We'll be right back and we're back.
(11:20):
So then, what did that paper conclude?
Speaker 2 (11:23):
That elephants probably do not get drunk on fermented fruit.
They probably eat it quite a bit, but it would
require a huge amount for them to get drunk. It
would be so hard for them to eat that much,
and it would go against what their typical eating behavior is.
And it also require each fruit to contain a pretty
unlikely amount of ethanol in the fruit. So it's very
(11:47):
hard to get an elephant drunk, is what this paper found.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, it's interesting that, of course the Internet would try
to figure out how much alcohloing to get to an
elephant to get it drunk.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
Yes, and how many elephants can you drink with before
you get kicked out? Of a bar. That's the cat one.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
How many elephants can you fit in a bar?
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Exactly? Would the elephant be the designated driver?
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Well, the good thing is that if you are drunk,
then you can just you know, get in the trunk.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
And I have to say this is probably the first
episode I can get my daughter to listen to because
it features drunk elephant. Yes, which is a very trendy
brand of beauty. Has skincare heard of it?
Speaker 2 (12:27):
I have heard of it?
Speaker 1 (12:29):
All right, Well, what are some other examples of animals
in nature that eat or drink? I'll call Well, a.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Really cute one that I like is this animal called
a palm civet. Now they're called palmsivets or civet cats.
They're actually not cats, and they're not at all related
to felines. They're vivarid's. They're very cute, like a cross
between a fair and a cat. They're very, very cute.
They live in South and Southeast Asia forests, and they're
(12:55):
famous for other reasons. Actually, Kobe Luwak, have you heard
of this? It's where they eat the coffee beans and
it's excreted in their poop. Uh huh, and then people
will say like, well, this is really good coffee because
they know how to put the beans at their perfect
ripeness and then it comes out in their poop.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
I have had Have you had it coffee? Yeah? Yeah,
we were in BALI.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
How is it?
Speaker 1 (13:16):
It was tasty? I mean, I'm not a coffee kind
of sewer, but I mean it definitely felt a little richer, yeah, darker.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
And this is a great example of an animal who's
perfectly in the position to enjoy nature's brew. So this
civic cat is so in love with the taste of
fermented palm sap. They've been nicknamed toddy cats. So yeah,
so the locals would call this a fermented sap toddy
(13:47):
and they noticed that this palm civet would drink it
a lot. They really show this preference for this fermented
palm sap. And that palm sap actually is pretty high
in terms of its alcohol content. It gets up to
about five percent alcohol content. So that's not bad.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
I'd take a beer, right Yeah. And where do they
get it? Does it ferment in the tree itself?
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Yeah? So ferments in these sort of crevices in the palms,
so they can get it like go in. They go
directly in and lap it up. It's actually something that
people can also collect and brew themselves, so you can
get sap from the tree brew it, and when human
beings are doing that, the civets are really attracted to that,
so they'll calm down and kind of hang out with
you and try to get some of the fermented palm
(14:30):
sap that people drink called toddy. Yeah. So there's a
lot of research and one of the leading theories for
why they like this fermented palm sap so much is
that it's very high in calories, so they're not necessarily
going after it because they want to feel the buzz,
although they might actually enjoy the feeling.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yeah, I imagine after a long day, you want to
kick back with the palm like their beer.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Yeah, exactly, grab a beer with your buddies. It's funny
because it's sort of the inverse of humans, like we
like to drink, but we don't like the extra calories.
But for animals, they don't have access to grocery stores
and uber eats, so having something that's really high in
calories means that they have to do less work right.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Right, like getting drunk is an unfortunate side effect for
them or maybe fortunate. Can you tell?
Speaker 2 (15:20):
It depends right. Obviously for the birds we talked about,
that's really bad for them to get drunk. It can
actually hurt them. Some of them can overdose on alcohol
and either get alcohol poisoning and die, or smack into
something and die, or be a nice drunk little treat
for predator.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Okay, The next example Katie told me of animals that'd
like to drink alcohol are tiny fruit flies.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
They're so tiny. I think that fruitflies would be sort
of the opposite of an elephant, Like they have a
little bit of ethanol and they're they're just completely laid out.
Because they're so tiny, they should get drunk really easily.
I love ethanol. So fruitflies, as well as most organisms,
have an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase, or ADH, which can
(16:10):
help turn alcohol into lipids. So we also have a
version of this, as do pretty much most organisms. So
depending on the species of fruit flies, such as those
who lay their eggs on rotting fruit, they may have
the genes for ADH enzymes that produce them that more
efficiently metabolize ethanol. So there are these fruitflies that have
(16:34):
adapted to be more efficient, essentially at drinking, being able
to metabolize ethanol without getting too drunk.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Because they I guess they find it in nature, like
in these fermented fruits.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Maybe exactly, they're fruitflies and they have pretty easy access
to fermented fruit rotting fruit, right, so they lay their
eggs on rotting fruit, so it really helps to be
able to digest this fruit as it's routing.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
I wonder do they still get drunk like insects get drunk.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
That's really interesting. They can actually and it can lower
their inhibitions. There's this really funny study on fruitflies where
they found that. Well, first le me tell you the
name of the study because it's actually pretty funny. It's
sexual deprivation increases ethanol intake in Drosophilia. So when these
(17:21):
fruit flies called dmil and A. Gasters, when they are
rejected by a female, they will consume more ethanol than
the males who are not rejected by the females who
successfully mate with the females.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Okay, this is pretty amazing. In this study, scientists from
the University of California, San Francisco separated two groups of
male fruitflies. One group they would put in an enclosure
with a bunch of version female fruit flies, and they
would just go at it. The other group of male fruitlies, however,
was placed in an enclosure with females that had already
(17:59):
made it, so they would almost all reject the males.
The scientists would do this for days, so one group
of males got to me normally and the other group
would just get rejected all the time. Then the scientist
gave the male fruit flies two options for food, either
normal food, which was just sugar water with yees extract,
(18:23):
or normal food with fifteen percent alcohol, which is about
as strong as a port or a sherry. What the
scientist found was that the male flies that kept getting
rejected would basically drink more alcohol than the male flies
that didn't get rejected. Well, first of all, it's like
(18:44):
they're taking solace in the alcohol because they got rejected.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yes, maybe, I mean it's interesting because the paper was
really looking at sort of this interesting trade off in
terms of reward pathways. Right, So the fly goes out,
it wants to mate, It doesn't get this mating, and
so it's like still kind of looking forward to satiate
this reward pathway in its brain. Then it maybe overindulges
in something else where it's trying to get this sort
(19:08):
of reward, whereas the flies that successfully made it's like
this reward pathway has been satisfied to some degree, so
it doesn't have the need to overindulge in the alcohol.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
I see they're already drunk on love.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Did I need to hit the bottle to feel better?
Speaker 2 (19:23):
I mean, it's very relatable though, even beyond alcohol, right
was humans like when we're stressed or when we're feeling
rejected or something, we might overindulge, not just an alcohol,
but food, sweet, video games, whatever. We kind of like
as like a icee because you know, we still need
to satisfy this reward pathway. But I didn't get it
this way, so I need to get it that way.
(19:44):
So that's one of the theories behind why these poor
fruit flies drink when they're rejected.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
I need to feel good somehow, Yes, exactly. And that's
not the only interesting thing that scientists have found. In
another study titled Recurring ethanol exposure induces disinhibited courtship in Drosophila,
scientists at Penn State University found that alcohol need fruit
flies more aroused and lower their inhibitions.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
So when they drink more ethanol, their inhibitions are lowered.
It increases their arousal while also decreasing their cognitive abilities.
So basically it lowers their standards so they can go
back out there. So it's very human like, right.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
It kind of gives them beer goggles, yeah, seeing it
lowers their.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
Standards, lowers their standards.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Yeah, although film flies have like a million eyes, so
you need like a million little beer goggles.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
They have compound eyes sort of like many facets to
their eyes, so you would need very complicated beer goggles.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Yeah, it actually lowers their standards, so they go back
out there with maybe more more confidence.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Go back out there. It lowers their standards also. Females,
it lowers their standards as well.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Yeah, we're relatable to a college campus perhaps, yes, woh.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Interesting, So yes, to answer your question, fruit flies can
get drunk and they do sometimes.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
So yeah, fruit flies seem to have a lot in
common with college students. All right, when we come back,
Katie's going to tell us a few more examples of
animals who like to get tipsy, including what you calls
the best drinker in the animal kingdom. Stay with us,
we'll be right back, and we're back then.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Some animals are actually specifically adapted to be resistant to
getting too drunk because they drink ethanol so much. They
really rely on it as this caloric resource. But if
they got as drunk as they should get by drinking
all of that, they would not be able to function
and it wouldn't do them any goods. So there is
this tree shrew called the pin tailed tree shrew. They're
(22:08):
really really cute. They're found in Thailand, Borneo, and Indonesia
and these dense forests. They're small, they are only about
fifty grams. They look like mice with the really long noses.
They have these little feathery tufts, so they're adorable. They're
really small. They don't really seem like the type to
be a huge party animal out there boozing it up
(22:31):
every night, but they absolutely are. They're one of the
best drinkers in the animal kingdom.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
Uh yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
So they drink the nectar of Bertram palm buds, So
this one is like from like an actual bud on
the palm tree, which have an alcohol content of about
three point eight percent, which is similar to a beer,
and they are able to metabolize huge amounts of this
(22:59):
palm bud neck. The amount of alcohol they consume would
be like me drinking, as a sort of average sized woman,
about ten glasses of wine every twelve hours, which yeah,
I couldn't. That would be a definite challenge for.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Me, unless you got rejected at the fruit fly.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Exactly. If I got rejected by a fruitfly, I might
start to drink a bit.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
You would hit ruck bottom, is what you say.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I would.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Yeah, So the true is no shrewe. It likes to
drink it up.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah, it really does. They drink a lot, and they
also have this genetic predisposition for producing adh enzymes that
more efficiently metabolized ethanol. And the interesting thing is that
these tree shrews are probably pretty similar to the common
ancestor of primates. They are not the same. We didn't
(23:50):
descend from these specific species, but there's a probably very
similar tree shrew that primates have as a common ancestor.
And so it's called the drunken monkey hypothesis, which is
that because we all had this common arboreal ancestor that
was probably omnivorous, probably ate a lot of fruits, that
there was an evolutionary predisposition for primates to be able
(24:13):
to metabolize ethanol. Indeed, we do see a lot of
examples of monkeys eating fermented fruit and seeming to have
a bit more of a tolerance for it.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Interesting, so the shrew has it, and so that's maybe
where we got it too right.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Potentially, yes, because.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
We can drink alcohol. Basically, it's not immediately poisonous to.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Us exactly as far as animals go, we're pretty good
at metabolizing alcohol go us. There was actually some research
that found a potential ten million year old mutation of
sort of a primate human common ancestor who may have
had a genetic mutation somewhere in this genome that had
(24:57):
a more profound production of the alcohol metabolizing enzyme.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
And so, with this true, do you know if it
affects their behavior?
Speaker 2 (25:06):
That's a really good question. I don't think it does
seem to affect them too strongly. They drink it so
frequently that who knows what they would be like sober.
But no, they function quite well even while drinking.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
They're either always drunk or they don't get drunk.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Right, It's not sort of like the fruitfly situation where
you see the fruit fly. It is suddenly going like,
all right, anyone wanted to come home with me. But
it's interesting because in monkeys, certain primates do seem to
have a preference for drinking socially, potentially when they're younger.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Really there's so much there. Monkeys drink socially, so.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Invervet monkeys, when they are introduced to a situation where
they can drink alcohol, they're very happy to drink it.
But there's a social species of primates, so there might
be something to the alcohol helping to lower inhibitions, you know,
just like in humans. One of the interesting things that
my point to that is the juveniles drink it more
than the adults.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
What are these monkeys and how are they getting the alcohol?
Speaker 2 (26:09):
I don't think they genterally drink alcohol in their natural environment,
but when they were introduced to areas where they could
have sugarcane, I believe, or if they're given in a
research situation like a sugar water mixed with some alcohol,
they'll drink it. In this case, researchers were actually providing them, hey, monkey,
(26:30):
would you like to drink something, and then seeing whether
they had that preference for drinking alcohol. That was offered
to them by people.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Oh, I see, it was sort of like what happens
if you introduce alcohol to a group of human like animals.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Exactly exactly. The study is called Voluntary Alcohol Consumption and
Verbant Monkeys individual sex and age differences. So they are
looking specifically to see like if there's some sort of difference,
and they found the juveniles like to drink more. Whoa,
the juveniles have less of a responsibility in terms of
their social organization, so maybe for them it's like they
(27:05):
can kind of let loose. They can drink a lot,
but the adults rein it in a little bit. One
of the hypotheses is that they may enjoy the social
effects of the alcohol, but for the adults that have
more responsibility in terms of maintaining sort of order in
the vervet society, they might drink less because of that.
It's also interesting females actually drink more. The female vervet
(27:28):
monkeys like to drink more.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Whoa, the females would drink more alcohol than the males.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Yeah, they showed a stronger preference for the alcohol as
well as and juveniles would show a stronger preference. So
if you combine that teen girls, teen girl, monkeys love
the alcohol of us. I don't know if that's how
that worked out in the study in terms of the
mouth of it, but yeah, the juveniles seem to drink
more and the females also seem to drink more.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Wow. I wonder what the proposal for this study was, Like, Hey,
give us money, so we can give all culture a
bunch of monkeys and then see what happens.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Well, I'm looking forward to starting my own beauty brand,
either called drunk monkey or maybe drunk fruit fly.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Drunk fruit fly, drunk monkey, not drunken civit palms Asian palm,
civit cat, maybe a little bit too much.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
So what else did you learn from this paper? The
evolutionary ecology of ethanol?
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Yeah, so that's really interesting because this was like a
review of a bunch of different studies, and the authors
of this paper seem to think that it is a
lot more common than we realized. That animals intentionally sinking
out ethanol is probably relatively common when the stars aligned,
so to speak. Right, But animals who are in the
(28:43):
premium circumstances for fermented foods, like maybe flying insects, omnivorous
animals frugivores, nectivorous animals, those that have access to sugars.
They seem to think that because we do have this
ability to produce this enzyme, that the intentional seeking out
of ethanol is potentially more common than we know. There's
(29:06):
probably some evolutionary pressure for them to develop a higher
tolerance for ethanol because you need a lot of calories
really fast, and so if you can metabolize ethanol really efficiently,
like a fruit fly or a pintailed true can, then
you're going to get a lot of high efficiency nutrition
really quickly.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
So then I guess the answer to the question do
animals like drinking alcohol? The answer is yes, but they
do it for the calories, not for the buzz.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Mostly for the calories. It seems perhaps primates may also
enjoy it for a social context, like we talked about
with the vervet monkeys, but seems mostly for animals, getting
those calories are what they want, and then the buzz
is either a pleasant or unpleasant side effect. So it's
kind of it's the opposite of people, right, like we
(29:55):
want the buzz without the calories. For animals, they want
the calories with maybe a little buzz, but not.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Too much right, right, unless you're a fruit fly, in
which case you technically buzz all the time exactly.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Well, they really enjoy those calories, but then if they
get rejected, then they're doing it for the uh Misery
Loves company at their little tiny fruit fly bar.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Katie. Yeah, absolutely, thanks
for joining us. See you next Wednesday. You've been listening
to Science Stuff production of iHeartRadio, written and produced by
me Or Hitcham, edited by Rose Seguda, executive producer Jerry Rowland,
and audio engineer and mixer Kasey Pegram, and you can
(30:40):
follow me on social media. Just search for PhD Comics
in the name of your favorite platform. Be sure to
subscribe to sign Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell your friends
we'll be back next Wednesday with another episode.
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