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Thursday, March 4, 2021
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Birds and Booze are just as synonymous as Humans and Booze

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Researchers have found out that birds mumble and stammer their songs just like us, humans when they get high while drinking.

Oregon Health and Science University researchers did a study in order to find out how our different parts of brain respond to alcohol. They also tested their theories on zebra finches after giving them berries and fruits spiked up with alcohol.

They pretty much saw how their birdsongs start to get affected when the alcohol in their bloodstream reaches a certain level. A 0.08 % alcohol level is enough to make the birds slur their songs. This is also the legal driving limit for humans in most of the states.

It was also observed that alcohol affects different parts of the bird’s brains differently.

The findings could help us understand how humans learned to speak because the way birds learn to sing is quite similar to us in learning to speak.

Researchers say Birds are affected by Booze just like us

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Scientists have found out that whether if you’re a person or a bird, getting drunk acts the same for both. Oregon Health and Science University’s researchers fed juiced laden with alcohol to zebra finches in order to understand how their merry songs get affected by booze.

Just as expected, their songs depicted the tale of a person getting drunk in a bar and starting to sing. Their songs became a little less melodious after alcohol level in their blood reached 0.08 %. For curiosity, this is the same level that’s the legal driving limit for us in most states. The birds began to hum their songs in a mumbling fashion which is often what happens when we drink too much. They further stated that some parts of their songs were more affected by alcohol, indicating that alcohol affected the brain activity differently in different parts of the brain.

This research was aimed at understanding how our body processes alcohol because the way birds learn to sing and we learn to speak is quite similar.

Drunken birds slur just like humans: Study says

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Researchers from Oregon Health & Science University have found that birds slur after getting drunk just like human do. Scientists selected Zebra finch, a song bird that learns to sing in the same manner as humans learn speech.

In the study made, Researcher described how a group of zebra finches reacted after being given a mixture of grape juice and ethanol. They have recorded how the acoustics of the song altered after having alcohol.

Researchers wrote “The most pronounced effects were decreased amplitude and increased entropy, the latter likely reflecting a disruption in the birds’ ability to maintain the spectral structure of song under alcohol,”

“Furthermore, specific syllables, which have distinct acoustic structures, were differentially influenced by alcohol, likely reflecting a diversity in the neural mechanisms required for their production.” They added.

Zebra finch will prove to be a powerful model in understanding how alcohol affects learned social behaviors in humans, the researchers said.

Alcohol makes birds to slur their songs: Research says

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According to the new study made on birds to understand Human speech reveal that alcohol makes birds to slur their songs.

The birds were given alcohol around 0.08 percent of their blood level which is enough as far as the bird’s standard is concerned.

Researchers from the Oregon Health and Science University allured zebra finches with spiked juice to study birdsongs to study more about human speech. Birds learn to sing in the same way as humans learn to talk. In fact it is easy to do the study on a caged bird as compared to a human infant.

So birds do give insight into the brain mechanism that makes the speech possible for human.

There hasn’t been much research on the vocal impairment caused by the alcohol just because of the lack of non-human labs that are capable of ‘speech’ to work on.

“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.” Researcher Christopher Olson told NPR.

At once the birds hum and started to slur their songs.

Researcher mentioned in the study “The most pronounced effects were decreased amplitude and increased entropy,” which means that the songs got less organized and reticent.

Surprisingly all part of the song were not equally effected. Songs of Zebra finch is composed of specific syllables each with different acoustic nature and some are affected more than the others.

This made the researchers think that alcohol has a different effect on different part of the brain. Further studies may help explore more.

Approximately Half of the World’s Animals Vanished Since 1970

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The recent reports of WWF (World Wide Fund) revealed that almost half of the world’s animals vanished since 1970. The population of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles drop down by 52% within 1970 to 2010.

Alternatively, the report of conservation group’s Living Planet, published every 2 years, stated that, the demands of human kinds are increased by 50%, which seems more than that the nature bears, trees felled, ground water pumped, CO2 emissions increased more than the Earth can bear (Reuters).

Ken Norris (Director of Science at the Zoological Society of London) stated, “This huge damage is not foreseeable, though the outcome of the way we choose to live.”

Moreover, the report stated that we can still tackle the situation if politicians and businesses took the right actions to save nature.

“It’s quite vital that we grab the opportunity in order to develop a sustainable future where people could live and thrive in harmony with nature. We can’t preserve the nature by only protecting wild places, though it’s also about conservation of the humanity’s future, indeed, our only way to survive,” International Director of WWF, General Marco Lambertini stated.

As per the reports finding of the populations of vertebrate wildlife, the major declines were in tropical regions, especially Latin America. WWF, which believes to be a “Living Planet Index”, is relying on the trends in 10,380 populations of 3,038 mammal, bird, reptile, and amphibian and fish species.

World Wide Fund told, the average 52% decline is much larger than the previously published reports, partially because these studies has based on more readily accessible information from Europe & North-America. According to the same report published 2 years back, stated the decline of 28% within 1970 to 2008.

Certainly, the worst decline was believed to be amongst the population of fresh water species, which equals to 76% till 2010. On the other hand, marine and terrestrial decline equals to 39%. The major reason for the decline in populations happened due to the loss of natural habitats, exploitation due to hunting and fishing and most importantly due to climate change.

To measure the variation between the statistics of various countries experimental impact, the report gauged that how large an ‘ecological footprint’ each one had and how much productive land and water area, or “bio-capacity”, each country reliable for.

Furthermore, the report revealed that Kuwaitis followed by Qatar and UAE had seems to be the largest ecological footprint so far, as they are consuming and wasting more resources as compared to any other nation. In addition, poorer countries such as India, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo also had ecological footprint that seems fine with the planet’s ability to absorb their demands.

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