Bats Get The Munchies
By Hannah Isom
If you thought that we humans were the only creatures to get the munchies after a heavy night on the town, then think again.
New evidence presented at the Society for Experimental Biology’s Annual Meeting in Glasgow this weekend suggests that bats are rather partial to a sweet snack to combat those hangover blues.
The study, conducted on Egyptian fruit bats, showed that they prefer foods with a high sugar content, to neutralise the effects of alcohol toxicity. Now you may be wondering how a bat gets drunk in the first place…well, as fleshy fruits like figs and dates ripen, the sugar inside them ferments and gets converted into ethanol, better known as booze.
Unsurprisingly, fruit bats are partial to a bit of fruit and the riper the better! In fact some fruit eaten by the bats can contain as much as 1% ethanol, which to a tiny bat, is quite a drinking binge.
Scientists at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel decided to investigate the effects of consuming different sugars on alcohol toxicity in bats, and also, which type of sugars the bats prefer as a hair-of-the-dog. After breathalysing the bats (before you ask, I don’t know how you breathalyse a fruit bat), they found that those who has consumed fructose, a type of sugar molecule, had the greatest reduction in ethanol toxicity compared with glucose or sucrose.
Interestingly, however, the bats themselves preferred sucrose overall, proving that, like humans staggering back from the pub and thinking that a lamb kebab with extra chilli sauce will act as a miracle cure, fruit bats don’t always know what’s best for them. Francisco Sanchez from Ben-Gurion says it’s all a “matter of taste”.
Visit Hannah for the finest science, or use the links below to get more science of the sauce:
- News - It's not just the bats, the mutts are boozing too
- Strange - Why beer and saunas just don't mix
- Spoof - The scientist and his beer goggles
- News - The wine-buff robot
New evidence presented at the Society for Experimental Biology’s Annual Meeting in Glasgow this weekend suggests that bats are rather partial to a sweet snack to combat those hangover blues.
The study, conducted on Egyptian fruit bats, showed that they prefer foods with a high sugar content, to neutralise the effects of alcohol toxicity. Now you may be wondering how a bat gets drunk in the first place…well, as fleshy fruits like figs and dates ripen, the sugar inside them ferments and gets converted into ethanol, better known as booze.
Unsurprisingly, fruit bats are partial to a bit of fruit and the riper the better! In fact some fruit eaten by the bats can contain as much as 1% ethanol, which to a tiny bat, is quite a drinking binge.
Scientists at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel decided to investigate the effects of consuming different sugars on alcohol toxicity in bats, and also, which type of sugars the bats prefer as a hair-of-the-dog. After breathalysing the bats (before you ask, I don’t know how you breathalyse a fruit bat), they found that those who has consumed fructose, a type of sugar molecule, had the greatest reduction in ethanol toxicity compared with glucose or sucrose.
Interestingly, however, the bats themselves preferred sucrose overall, proving that, like humans staggering back from the pub and thinking that a lamb kebab with extra chilli sauce will act as a miracle cure, fruit bats don’t always know what’s best for them. Francisco Sanchez from Ben-Gurion says it’s all a “matter of taste”.
Visit Hannah for the finest science, or use the links below to get more science of the sauce:
- News - It's not just the bats, the mutts are boozing too
- Strange - Why beer and saunas just don't mix
- Spoof - The scientist and his beer goggles
- News - The wine-buff robot
Image: W/Dawson
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