Zebra Finches "Slur" When Tipsy on Alcohol

Have you heard people sing when they are drunk? You would have heard some of it at least, before you ran away with your hands over your ears. The voices sound terribly off-key and you would need a couple of stiff ones yourself to block them out!

A recent study by Christopher Olson and his colleagues at Oregon Health and Science University showed even birds, especially zebra finches, go heady and faint when they are drunk, according to npr.com.

"We just showed up in the morning and mixed a little bit of juice with 6 percent alcohol, and put it in their water bottles and put it in the cages," said Olson. "At first we were thinking that they wouldn't drink on their own because, you know, a lot of animals just won't touch the stuff. But they seem to tolerate it pretty well and be somewhat willing to consume it."

It is interesting that finches for long have been used as a model to study human vocal learning, as well as to see how people learn to communicate by using language, Olson said. Obviously, alcohol affects human speech, so Olson and his team checked for similar problems that the birds had too.

The blood-alcohol levels that were reached seem insignificant. Just .05 to .08 percent is the level. Most students would laugh it off, but because birds metabolize alcohol differently, the level that was reached was enough to create the "drunken" effects that the scientists were looking for.

When you listen to the audio of the finches, you hear their songs getting a bit slurred and dim, or even slightly "less organized in their sound production." It is like any drunk person in a bar that calls out in order to get a lift.

Olson also wants to find out whether alcohol affects not just how birds sing, but how they learn new songs too. Do they get a hangover like a drunken man staggering in a bar, for instance?

Binge drinking has been found to damage their skill for learning new songs. It may impact even adolescents, according to newscientist.com.