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Spaced-Out / Drunk / Intoxicated Animals

Elephants drinking rice beer?????

No wonder they were Elephants trunk. :)

No? Oh well I’d better join Cochise
 
The situation becomes ever more complicated ... Other recently published research suggests elephants (and a surprising range of other mammals) are genetically ill-equipped to ingest alcohol and are therefore easily intoxicated.
Elephants Really Can’t Hold Their Liquor

Humans and other species have a gene mutation that lets them digest alcohol. In other species, it’s missing.

Humans are not the only animals that get drunk. Birds that gorge on fermented berries and sap are known to fall out of trees and crash into windows. Elk that overdo it with rotting apples get stuck in trees. Moose wasted on overripe crab apples get tangled in swing sets, hammocks and even Christmas lights.

Elephants, though, are the animal kingdom’s most well-known boozers. One scientific paper describes elephant trainers rewarding animals with beer and other alcoholic beverages, with one elephant in the 18th century said to have drunk 30 bottles of port a day. In 1974, a herd of 150 elephants in West Bengal, India, became intoxicated after breaking into a brewery, then went on a rampage that destroyed buildings and killed five people.

Despite these widespread reports, scientists have questioned whether animals — especially large ones such as elephants and elk — actually become inebriated. In 2006, researchers calculated that based on the amount of alcohol it takes to get a human drunk, a 6,600-pound elephant on a bender would have to quickly consume up to 27 liters of seven percent ethanol, the key ingredient in alcohol. Such a quantity of booze is unlikely to be obtained in the wild. Intoxicated wild elephants, the researchers concluded, must be a myth. As the lead author said at the time, “People just want to believe in drunken elephants.”

If you are one who wanted to believe, a study published in April in Biology Letters might serve as your vindication. A team of scientists say that the earlier myth-busting researchers made a common mistake: They assumed that elephants would have to consume as much alcohol to get drunk as humans do. In fact, elephants are likely exceptional lightweights because they — and many other mammals — lack a key enzyme that quickly metabolizes ethanol. The findings highlight the need to consider species on an individual basis. ...

Humans, chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas have an unusually high tolerance for alcohol because of a shared genetic mutation that allows them to metabolize ethanol 40 times faster than other primates. The mutation occurred around 10 million years ago, coinciding with an ancestral shift from arboreal to terrestrial living and, most likely, a diet richer in fallen, fermenting fruit on the forest floor.

To test whether other species independently evolved the same adaptation, Dr. Janiak and her colleagues searched the genomes of 85 mammals that eat a variety of foods and located the ethanol-metabolizing gene in 79 species. But they identified the same or similar mutation as humans in just six species — mostly those with a diet high in fruit and nectar, including flying foxes and aye-aye lemurs.

But most other mammals did not possess the mutation, and in some species, including elephants, dogs and cows, the ethanol-metabolizing gene had lost all function.

While the new study reveals the means by which elephants and other mammals may become inebriated, it does not explicitly confirm the phenomena in nature.
“The persistent myth of drunken elephants remains an open and tantalizing question, and a priority for future research” ...

FULL STORY: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/science/drunk-elephants-genes.html
 
Here are the bibliographic particulars and abstract of the study cited in the New York Times article above. The full(?) article is accessible at the link.

Genetic evidence of widespread variation in ethanol metabolism among mammals: revisiting the ‘myth' of natural intoxication
Mareike C. Janiak , Swellan L. Pinto , Gwen Duytschaever , Matthew A. Carrigan and Amanda D. Melin
Biol. Lett.1620200070
Published:29 April 2020
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0070

Abstract
Humans have a long evolutionary relationship with ethanol, pre-dating anthropogenic sources, and possess unusually efficient ethanol metabolism, through a mutation that evolved in our last common ancestor with African great apes. Increased exposure to dietary ethanol through fermenting fruits and nectars is hypothesized to have selected for this in our lineage. Yet, other mammals have frugivorous and nectarivorous diets, raising the possibility of natural ethanol exposure and adaptation in other taxa. We conduct a comparative genetic analysis of alcohol dehydrogenase class IV (ADH IV) across mammals to provide insight into their evolutionary history with ethanol. We find genetic variation and multiple pseudogenization events in ADH IV, indicating the ability to metabolize ethanol is variable. We suggest that ADH enzymes are evolutionarily plastic and show promise for revealing dietary adaptation. We further highlight the derived condition of humans and draw attention to problems with modelling the physiological responses of other mammals on them, a practice that has led to potentially erroneous conclusions about the likelihood of natural intoxication in wild animals. It is a fallacy to assume that other animals share our metabolic adaptations, rather than taking into consideration each species' unique physiology.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0070
 
Drunken birds (cedar waxwings) in Texas have caught the notice of residents who are sequestered at home due to pandemic restrictions.
Migratory birds getting drunk on fermented berries in Texas

A species of bird making its seasonal return to North Texas is drawing attention from neighbors who witnessed the avians engaging in an unusual behavior -- getting drunk on fermented berries.

Residents in the Fort Worth area said the cedar waxwings return to North Texas around this time of year, but they have noticed this time around that the birds are frequently seen acting disoriented and flying into windows after eating fermented berries. ...

"Because they eat predominantly berries, sometimes they eat berries that have fermented and are a little bit past their prime," Rachel Richter, an urban wildlife biologist with the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife, told WFAA-TV. "Sometimes they tend to overindulge a little bit, which can get them intoxicated."

Richter said cases of cedar waxwings getting intoxicated from fermented berries are actually pretty common. She said an increase in reports this year is likely the result of COVID-19 keeping people at home during the day, when the birds are more active. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2021/0...-on-fermented-berries-in-Texas/9441612297443/
 
Only a proportion of domestic cats have the propensity to be affected by catnip (Nepeta cataria). I used to grow it, when I had pet cats, and I used to pick a sprig of it fresh and give them a treat. It was, well... like catnip to them!

'Ernesto' seems to have main processed cartel in north America:

 
I have a couple of stories of spaced out animals. When i was a lot younger i used to enjoy a bit of a smoke, when i was living in a flat with a mate of mine, i had a chinchilla who would regularly steal my weed and eat it, resulting in him perching on his branch, briefly, before falling off then laying down for a long kip. Another time a friend of mine had a new puppy, which scoffed down his recently purchaced eighth of red leb, then promptly slept for a day.
 
There's an article in the latest FT about how there's not enough alcohol in fermented fruit to make an elephant or moose drunk. They're probably just confused looking for food, is the conclusion. And yet, there is doubt about that theory too, so basically we're back where we started.
 
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