Buzzed birds slur their songs, researchers find

  – Amina Khan, printed in Eugene Register Guard, L.A. Times

You know how that guy at the karaoke bar singing Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” sounds a little off after he’s had a few drinks? The same goes for buzzed birds, according to a team led by researchers from Oregon Health & Science University.

For a study published in PLOS ONE [Public Library of Science One] , scientists found that when they got some unsuspecting zebra finches drunk, the birds slurred their songs. The findings could help scientists study the neural processes underlying birdsong – and shed light on human speech.

While many scientists want to understand alcohol’s effects on such a complex system as speech, it’s difficult to perform the necessary studies on humans, which is why many researchers turn to birds…

For this paper, researchers gave white grape juice to one group of birds, and gave a mixture of the juice and ethanol to another group. They found a number of effects on different aspects of birdsong – particularly on amplitude and entropy…

We Respond & Your Comments

This “study” would usually have been fodder for a “Golden Fleece Award.” But it’s so utterly ridiculous that we decided to give it the spotlight it deserves. Herewith some questions and comments:

• Who gives a rat’s patootee about the “neural processes underlying birdsong”?
• If you want to “shed light” on human speech, here’s a radical idea – Study human speech!
• You need a study to “to understand alcohol’s effects on…speech?” We can tell you (and we won’t even require a grant application): If you drink too much you sound like an idiot. There – that was simple.

We don’t know how many taxpayer dollars OHSU scorched on this nonsense, but if it was ten it was nine too many.

Now, excuse us. This kind of (insert your favorite term here) makes us want to get our speech slurred.

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