Elephants Get Drunk (and They’re Lightweights), Pigeons Helped Win Wars, and Night Owls May Struggle to Regulate Their Emotions

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Science

4.6 • 964 Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2020

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Learn about why it might actually be pretty easy to drink an elephant under the table; how carrier pigeons like Cher Ami helped win the world wars; and why night owls may have worse emotion regulation than morning people.

Apparently, elephants get drunk and they're total lightweights by Cameron Duke

Burke, J. (2010, December 3). Elephants on drunken rampage kill three people. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/03/elephants-drunken-rampage-india
Elephants Drunk in the Wild? Scientists Put the Myth to Rest. (2005, December 21). Animals. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2005/12/news-elephants-drunk-wild-myth/
Goldman, J. G. (2014). Do animals like drugs and alcohol? BBC.com; BBC Future. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140528-do-animals-take-drugs
Janiak, M. C., Pinto, S. L., Duytschaever, G., Carrigan, M. A., & Melin, A. D. (2020). Genetic evidence of widespread variation in ethanol metabolism among mammals: revisiting the ‘myth’’ of natural intoxication.’ Biology Letters, 16(4), 20200070. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0070
No, a bunch of elephants didn’t get drunk and fall asleep in a tea garden. (2020, March 20). The Daily Dot. https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/drunk-elephant-viral-story-debunked/
Siegel, R. K., & Brodie, M. (1984). Alcohol self-administration by elephants. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 22(1), 49–52. https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03333758
Yirka, B. (2020, April 29). Study suggests elephants may get drunk naturally after all. Phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2020-04-elephants-drunk-naturally.html

Carrier pigeons helped win the world wars by Steffie Drucker

Shapiro, M. D., & Domyan, E. T. (2013). Domestic pigeons. Current Biology, 23(8), R302–R303. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2013.01.063
Guilford, T. (2014, April 23). Explainer: how do homing pigeons navigate? The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-do-homing-pigeons-navigate-25633
Dash, M. (2012, April 17). Closing the Pigeon Gap. Smithsonian Magazine; Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/closing-the-pigeon-gap-68103438/
Unsung heroes of World War I: the carrier pigeons. (2018, January 8). Pieces of History. https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2018/01/08/unsung-heroes-of-world-war-i-the-carrier-pigeons/
Maksel, R. (2018, August 29). When War Gets Weird. Air & Space Magazine; Air & Space Magazine. https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/when-war-gets-weird-180970156/
Pigeons in bras go to war. (2013, September 4). National Museum of American History. https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/2013/09/pigeons-in-bras-go-to-war.html
Wings of Valor - The Lost Battalion in the Argonne Forest. (2014). Accessed via Archive.org. https://web.archive.org/web/20180705234207/http://www.homeofheroes.com:80/wings/part1/3_lostbattalion.html

Night owls may have worse emotion regulation than morning larks by Grant Currin

Night Owls May Use Poorer Emotion Regulation Strategies Than Early Birds. (2020, April 16). Research Digest; Research Digest. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2020/04/16/night-owls-may-use-poorer-emotion-regulation-strategies-than-early-birds/
Antúnez, J. M. (2020). Circadian typology is related to emotion regulation, metacognitive beliefs and assertiveness in healthy adults. PLOS ONE, 15(3), e0230169. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0230169
Resnick, B. (2016, March 18). If you’re just not a morning person, science says you may never be. Vox; Vox. https://www.vox.com/2016/3/18/11255942/morning-people-evening-chronotypes-sleeping

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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/elephants-get-drunk-and-theyre-lightweights-pigeons-helped-win-wars-and-night-owls-may-struggle-to-regulate-their-emotions

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Curiosity.com.
0:06.4	I'm Cody Gough.
0:07.4	And I'm Ashley Hamer.
0:08.6	Today you'll learn about why it might actually be pretty easy to drink an elephant under the table, how carrier pigeons helped win the world
0:15.4	wars, and why night owls might have worse emotion regulation than morning people.
0:21.0	Would satisfy some curiosity.
0:23.0	Is it possible to get an elephant drunk?
0:27.0	Believe it or not, this is actually a question science has been dealing with for years.
0:31.8	While it's debatable whether elephants regularly get drunk in the wild,
0:35.1	new research suggests that these heavyweights are actually lightweights when it comes to
0:39.7	alcohol. First though, a disclaimer. Nobody is getting elephants drunk, at least not on purpose.
0:46.9	The elephants seem to be doing this on their own. In fact, that's why scientists are interested
0:52.0	in this.
0:53.0	There's a ton of anecdotal evidence that elephants go on drunken rampages after drinking booze or eating fermented fruit.
1:00.7	As recently as this past March, a story made the rounds online about elephants getting drunk on corn wine and passing out in a garden, though that might have been fake.
1:10.0	But there are other stories much older than that.
1:13.0	In the 1830s, a French naturalist recounted tales from Missoulou guides in South Africa
1:19.0	about male elephants acting aggressively after eating fermented vermined Marula fruits.
1:24.0	But many scientists have dismissed these stories as unlikely,
1:27.0	for several reasons.
1:29.0	For one, biologists say elephants steer clear of fruit
1:32.0	that's rotten enough to ferment.
	...

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