It’s quite a binge. A treeshrew in Malaysia has subsisted on alcoholic nectar for millions of years, according to research published this week in PNAS.
And six other species also appear to pop in on the animal’s local bar. According to the researchers behind the work this is the evidence for species other than humans having chronic alcohol intake.
“We discovered that seven mammalian species in a West Malaysian rainforest consume alcoholic nectar daily from flower buds of the bertam palm, which they pollinate,” write Frank Wiens and colleagues. “The 3.8% maximum alcohol concentration that we recorded is among the highest ever reported in a natural food.”
One of these species, the pentailed treeshrew, appears to handle its drink though. The researchers observed no wayward, intoxicated behaviour from the creatures even though their alcohol doses would make a human tipsy. What is not clear is whether the shrews benefit from the alcohol or how they deal with the risk from continuously high blood alcohol levels.
Other species drinking at the palms were the common treeshrew, the plantain squirrel, the gray tree rat, the Malayan wood rat, the chestnut rat, and the slow loris.
In Scientific American Robert Dudley of the University of California Berkeley says the study may support his theory that human fondness for alcohol comes from our past seeking of energy rich plants.
“Humans have an affinity for ethanol (plant-derived alcohol), and captive primates are well known to like to drink anthropogenically sourced ethanol,” he told Sciam.com. “Natural consumption of dietary ethanol deriving from fermenting fruits or nectar has never been studied previously, and this is a highly fruitful area for future investigation.”
Weins told the Daily Telegraph: “This discovery will probably not lead directly to a cure for human alcoholism in the sense that they have something that we can copy and are less vulnerable. In a general way, I think it likely that understanding the causes and consequences of treeshrew alcohol drinking in the natural environment will give new directions in the search for better therapies.”
Watch a video of the shrew here.
Image: Pentailed treeshrew / Annette Zitzmann
Video: National Academy of Sciences, PNAS (2008).