A tropical shrew with a taste for alcoholic nectar has been identified as the hardest-drinking creature in the world.

Pentailed tree shrews have such an appetite for alcohol that each night they imbibe, weight for weight, the equivalent of a human downing up to nine glasses of wine.

Their capacity to hold their drink and keep a clear head, however, puts human boozers to shame. After a night supping at the jungle bar the shrews are not even unsteady on their feet, let alone being copiously sick or starting drunken fights.

They get their drinks from bertam palms, which grow in the jungles of West Malaysia and produce nectar boasting an alcohol content that can match beer.

The strength of the nectar varies but it is sufficiently loaded for the shrews to be drunk every three nights if they got inebriated as easily as people.

Pentailed tree shrews, Ptilocercus lowii, were described by scientists studying them as chronic drinkers with such a high alcoholic consumption that their habit would be likely to kill other mammals, including humans.

Other jungle animals were also found to sup drink levels of alcohol from bertam palms, Eugeissona tristis, without any apparent ill-effects but the pentailed tree shrew was by far the heaviest drinker. Among the others were the slow loris, Nycticebus coucang, the common tree shrew, Tupaia glis, and the plantain squirrel, Callosciurus notatus.

“Pentailed tree shrews frequently consume alcohol doses. . . that would intoxicate humans,” the research team reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “We detected chronic alcohol intake by pentailed tree shrews and some other mammals through alcoholic nectar of the bertam palm.

“Alcohol intake by the pentailed tree shrew reaches levels that are dangerous to other mammals. This finding suggests adaptive benefits inherent to a diet high in alcohol.”

The German-led research team said it was likely the shrews avoided drunkenness and hangovers because their bodies had enhanced biological mechanisms to break down and dispose of alcohol, though what they are has yet to be pinpointed.

By studying the animals, which each weighs 47g on average, the scientists hope for new insights into why humans, who learnt the art of brewing only 9,000 years ago, have a taste for alcohol.

Pentailed tree shrews are regarded as the closest living match to a common ancestor of primates that lived 55 million years ago. Because they are so similar to a common ancestor with man it is hoped that they can cast light on human alcoholic “use and abuse”.

Animal instincts

— Baboons are known to be fond of fruit from the African Marula tree which, once picked and eaten, rapidly ferments causing the creatures to become intoxicated

— Cattle and horses in the Midwestern United States that eat astragalus, a legume, display impaired vision, stumbling, imbalance and abnormal movement such as making huge leaps over tiny obstacles. The plant is nicknamed “locoweed” for its drug-like effect on livestock

— Researchers have observed water buffalo herds in Asia seeking out opium poppies. The animals appear to carefully regulate their dose, consuming just enough to numb pain and relieve tiredness

— Robins have been recorded dropping off their perch while eating grapes that have fermented on the vine. Other birds have been found dead from cirrhosis of the liver beneath the plants

Sources: McGill University; Princeton University; Saskatchewan University; Wild Health, Cindy Engels

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