Animals Are Getting Drunk More Than We Thought, Study Finds

If you’ve ever seen a bird flying haphazardly and wondered if it might be drunk, you might be right. In fact, more animals might be getting drunk than scientists previously thought. 

A new study published in the Trends in Ecology & Evolution journal breaks down how researchers looked into animal consumption of ethanol and its prevalence among various species today. “Anecdotes of vertebrates consuming ethanol are common, but very few are validated and described in academic literature,” the team wrote in the paper. 

The goal was to determine just how much ethanol animals are consuming from naturally fermented fruit, which typically has one to two percent alcohol by volume. Though, stronger ones have been found in more tropical regions. 

“We’re moving away from this anthropocentric view that ethanol is just something that humans use,” study senior author Kimberley Hockings said in a statement. “It’s much more abundant in the natural world than we previously thought, and most animals that eat sugary fruits are going to be exposed to some level of ethanol.”

However, animals’ use for getting “drunk,” so to speak, is much different than ours. 

“From an ecological perspective, it is not advantageous to be inebriated as you’re climbing around in the trees or surrounded by predators at night. That’s a recipe for not having your genes passed on,” senior author Matthew Carrigan said. “It’s the opposite of humans who want to get intoxicated but don’t really want the calories. From the non-human perspective, the animals want the calories but not the inebriation.”

More research needs to be done to determine whether animals intentionally consume ethanol for the purposes of feeling boozy. It turns out a horse didn’t need to walk into a bar at all; he just needed some fermented fruit.