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