So You Think You Can Drink?

Today's blog reminds me of a story one of the guys I used to work with told about when he was in the Marines. There was going to be a drinking contest between our troops and New Zealand. In his words,"We sent in our best drunks,but they were no match for the New Zealanders." Anyway this little guy could no doubt put even the New Zealanders to shame. The Malaysian pen-tailed tree shrew subsists on a diet equivalent to 100% beer. It drinks the fermented nectar of the flower buds of the bertam palm plant. The nectar can reach up to 3.8% alcohol content,one of the highest contents recorded in a natural food. Several other animals (humans included) drink alcohol,but not on a continuous basis. These little guys do it around the clock all year long. Here is the part that made me remember the New Zealand drinking story,the shrews don't seem to get drunk. They measured blood alcohol in the animals higher than similar doses in humans,but they showed no signs of intoxication. (I have to wonder exactly how they measured their blood alcohol...did they dress another shrew in a police uniform and have them take a breath-a-lyzer? or perhaps a little shrew in a nurse's uniform drew blood.)
Researchers hope to figure out how these tiny creatures cope with the mass quantities of alcohol in hope of developing medicines for alcohol poisoning.