More Innocent Drug Overdose Victims

Surely no one doubts that addictive drugs are dangerous, that they are killers, but these deadly chemicals harm victims even more widely than we might at first have thought.

The BBC Nature article "Dead Birds Were Intoxicated, an Investigation Finds" reports that scientific tests on a group of dead blackbirds in England show that alcohol, from fermenting fruit that they had eaten, was a cause in their deaths, and was also consistent with the drunken behaviour of another bird which eventually recovered and flew off (2012). The article also notes that although people sometimes report similar personal observations, they are rare, with very few being confirmed by tests for alcohol.

Getting high?

I was a little surprised when I read that the drug alcohol had actually killed a whole group of birds. If the report was that they were found drunk, it would have been less surprising, but of course, alcohol is a very deadly drug of addiction, and a number of people also overdose on it every year. If they had merely gotten drunk and merry, the birds might also have flown off and never have been tested. I haven't checked the statistics, but I suspect that more people in most countries such as Australia, the US and Thailand overdose on alcohol than on heroin and every other illegal drug every year. And of course we all know that alcohol is a leading killer in traffic accidents and violent crime, as well as the cause of massive health costs to society in every country where it is a popular recreational drug of choice; it now seems that other animals than humans also have drug problems.

Another interesting note in the report is that "birds that have a lot of fruit in their diet are ... are better adapted at eating fruit that has higher alcohol concentrations" (¶ 9). I guess that like human beings, the birds have evolved to cope with alcohol, so even if it's not often verified by tests, the birds are probably enjoying alcohol on a regular basis, and have been for a very long time. But do they enjoy this drug and its intoxicating effects as much as human beings do? Again, I don't know, but it's clear that they enjoy consuming alcoholic fruit, even to the point where it causes serious social and personal problems to them, which is very much like human behaviour. Perhaps the government should make it illegal for birds to use alcohol, and put them and the wicked trees and micro-organisms producing it in prison? Worse, the birds were found at a primary school! Surely there should be laws against drunkenness and the use of drugs near primary schools. Such laws are definitely as likely to help the innocent birds just as much as the same policy helps humans with drug problems.

I wonder if birds also enjoy other addictive drugs popular with humans? Do they, for example, flock around poppy fields or feast on coca leaves? Do they peck happily at ganja plants growing covertly in the hills?

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Reference

Dead birds were intoxicated, an investigation finds. (2012, November 3). BBC Nature. Retrieved November 5, 2012 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/20180091