zebra finch Archives - Capital Berg

Birds and Booze are just as synonymous as Humans and Booze

January 1, 2015 By Carol Harper

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.

Drunken birds slur just like humans: Study says

December 30, 2014 By Marlene R. Litten

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

December 29, 2014 By Cliff Jenkins Scott

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.

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