It seems that the animal kingdom is full of alcoholics. For many creatures, from deer eating fermented apples and getting stuck in trees to garden squirrels hitting themselves with dried pears, alcohol seems like an intriguing idea. Still, there is another creature that scores quite high on the table of mammals that consume alcohol: the hamster.
There are a total of 19 species in seven genera that include hamsters in the subfamily Cricetinae, popular as pets and common worldwide. Throughout the scientific discovery process, hamsters became a common subject for scientific research, some of which focused directly on their affinity for alcohol.
Critical care consultant to the Bradford Institute for Health Research, Dr. Tom Lawton has touched on some of the humble hamsters’ drinking abilities.
“In my previous conversation with @microlabdoc [Dr Christine Peters], I learned that not everyone knows about the hamster’s extraordinary capacity for alcohol,” Lawton wrote. they can withstand amounts that can kill a person.”
So much so that there is enough research to crown hamsters as the Alcohol Kings of the Lab. Studies in 1960 showed that although mice can be persuaded to drink alcohol through genetic engineering or conditioning, hamsters will start ingesting alcoholic substances at the first opportunity given to them.
Another article from 1962 further supported hamsters’ preference for drinking alcohol over water, finding that most animals studied got about 88 percent of their fluid intake from the alcoholic option.
One possible explanation for this lies in the caloric content of alcohol, which is not far from fat and allows chubby hamsters to survive colder winters. It also seems possible that the hoarder lifestyle may play a role, as food collections may begin to ferment in the underground pantry, which may ensure hamsters are no strangers to a strong alcohol option.
What’s more, despite the incredible amount of alcohol that hamsters can consume – the equivalent of an adult male consuming around 21 bottles of wine, Lawton says – they seem to have a fairly high tolerance. This was demonstrated in a 2015 paper that formulated a “Wobbling Scale” to measure hamster poisoning.
This scale made measurements using hamsters’ increasingly rocking nature to detect drunkenness until the small rodents fell to the ground and were unable to get up again.
Their impressive tolerance for alcohol is due to hamsters’ rather large and highly efficient livers, which can filter alcohol and reduce the amount circulating in the blood. It was demonstrated that ethanol was injected directly into the hamsters’ bloodstream, deactivating the liver, resulting in behavior that fell outside of the Wobbling Scale charts.
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