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Drunken Parrot Season Starts in Australia
bazzalunatic writes "Each wet season in northern Australia dozens of colorful lorikeets have to be rescued because they appear drunk, fall out of trees and even get a hangover-like sickness. No one knows quite what's going on, but the best explanation is they get smashed from fermented fruit. From the story: 'Experts say they are not sure if the lorikeets are actually drunk, but they do have tell-tale symptoms. "They exhibit odd behavior like falling over or difficulty flying [and] they keep running into things," says Darwin vet Dr Stephen Cutter from The Ark Animal Hospital.'"
I also fall over, have difficulty flying and run into things when drunk.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
party with these guys!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSm7BcQHWXk
...a loud clang and laughter ensue.
The aborigines are messing around with parrot jammers.
If it's a "natural event", why do they need to be "saved"? Shoudn't we let nature take its course?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Here it usually begins sometime around the fifth Jägerbomb and ends with someone pissing on a stick and seeing a "+" sign.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Let's find these magic trees where the party is obviously at.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
parrot spring break?
sweeeeeet so i looked an my joke actually makes sense cause it is fucking spring time in Australia right about now...OH HOW MUCH DO I OWN???
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
AA meetings would be so much more fun with a fuck ton of parrots at them also...just saying Parrots if you are ready to make a change..and all.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
Obviously due to a Jimmy Buffet concert in the area.
so that's why i woke up next to a parrot this morning
don't make the mistake I did and underestimate these little guys. They drank me under the table and I woke up the next day with black marker cloacas all over my face.
Jimmy Buffet would say that it's always drunken parrot season ...
Couldn't a simple blood test/tox screen tell scientists quickly if it is alcohol or some other source? Basically scientists are saying "they act drunk, we don't know for certain why". They could be eating piles of rotted fruit, or a naturally occoring berry, or poisonous insects or fumes from machinery. They could be doing it intentionally or accidentally. Bottom line is, if you are going to go to the trouble of posting a study... shouldn't some research and diagnostics be done if it is worth caring about?
The robin migration happens in the central part of Oregon (high desert type area) right when the juniper trees have their blue berries all over them. These apparently get the birds very high and they are fond of them. They, too, fall out of trees, squak crazily, and have mid-air collisons with each other and anything on which they were trying to land. Trees can have over a hundred robins in them at a time, it's actually quite hilarious to watch. If you're in the Pacific NW it might be a closer trip than down under to see the hilarity.
I got an entirely different vibe from that headline than it being the time of year the Parrots are getting drunk. Greater challenge because they don't fly straight?
Big, drunk, angry birds with sharp beaks! I've owned a caique parrot, which is a little bit smaller than a lorakeet. They can be quite vicious when they are angry, very capable of drawing blood.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
This happens elsewhere too. In Alaska various juncos, chickadees, pine siskins, and other small songbirds will get drunk off of mountain ash berries that freeze and ferment on the tree during the late fall and early winter. This has happened since "time immemorial" according to various Athabaskan and Tlingit elders I've talked to, and they have always enjoyed watching the drunken antics.
Moose will get drunk from eating crabapples frozen and fermented on the tree. I think they browse the mountain ash berries too. There was one moose a few years ago in downtown Anchorage that was stumbling around drunk and managed to get a string of Christmas lights in his antlers.
It's probably better than drunken pirate season!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
So does this mean that you can hunt parrots in Australia, but only if they are drunk? That seems like a very unsporting hunt.
For some of the birds the drunkeness makes them angry and so they catapault themselves at pigs.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Drunken Birds.
Global warming is causing an increase in wild yeast's ability to ferment the parrot's fruit diet.
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Parrots, big deal. In Sweden drunk moose fall of trees.
You can't handle the truth.
One of my neighbors when I was a kid had a couple of big mulberry trees that put out enormous quantities of fruit. When it was all ripe and overripe, it would fall to the ground and ferment - just walking by you could smell alcohol. The blue jays used to binge on this stuff and get quite loaded. First, they'd get very very noisy. A while later you'd see them just walking down the sidewalk, not even thinking about flying anywhere. Pretty funny (except the hangover when they woke up the next day, I suppose).
With wet weather and elevated temperatures also comes overgrowth of molds, mildews, algae, etc that could easily cause the symptoms described.
I've seen it myself in the rainforests of coastal Australia and it's not some wild theory there - it just happens that way and everybody knows it. And that was years ago. Why it is being presented here as some great mystery remaining to be solved is the mystery itself.
Of course, if the government wants to give a $1 million grant and a lot of good grain alcohol to study it first-hand, sign me up.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
News for nerds...? Not even in Idle ... come back, Taco.
There is a tree just below my patio and the rainbow lorikets are there all year round for more than the 15 years I've been here and only once have I seen them drunk on the fruit rolling around under the tree screeching and that tree flowers every year. Lets all blame climate change.
Seriously, beaks like razors, they used to stagger around drunk monstering other much larger birds.
Lori's aren't large parrots, more like the small guy in the bar who gets drunk and picks a fight with the largest person there.
They used to get smashed on fermenting mangos in our backyard, at night they were replaced by fruitbats, lying on their backs covered with mango pulp from the fruit that had fallen on top of them when they fell out of the tree and swearing.
Birds getting drunk on fermented berries is common all around the world and that's one of the options they're considering. However, TFA says that it might not be the case here: The effects can last days even after the bird is brought in for treatment, which really shouldn't happen seeing how amazingly fast metabolism parrots have. Also, the fact that these have so dramatically increased in the last ten years suggests that there might be more to it.
That said... It's really suspicious that they can't figure out whether the birds are actually drunk or not.
Are the "editors" required to post something about Australia each day, no matter how pointless, inane or uninteresting it is?
This Aussie "story" is really scraping the bottom of the barrel, which, I'm certain you'll agree, is really saying something.
...Darwin vet Dr Stephen Cutter from The Ark Animal Hospital.
Is that supposed to be some kind of joke? I thought Noah's Ark was the opposite of evolution?
I live in the southern part of Australia and in my last house we had a massive locquat tree. At the end of the season when the leftover fruit was fermenting, flocks of lorikeets used to come in and raid the tree daily. They'd get louder and louder as they ate more and I even saw one 'looping the loop' on a branch, going round and round while squawking.. They always seemed to have trouble flying in a straight line on their way out..
Seriously, this is practically a sport in West Australia with the "28 Parrots" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Ringneck . Wheat harvest time they're all along the side of the road in groups of 20-30 sitting there waiting for the wheat trucks to go past and spill wheat (watch for a pot-hole or wallow) .. meals on wheels! Anyway.. once they sit in the lovely +40C summer heat, the wheat in their crops ferments and the buggars get drunk. To the point where you go driving past doing ~140kph and there's 20+ in the middle of the road, you can't brake and they're all trying to fly away with only 1 wing going, colliding into each other, rolling all over the place and WHAM!! Green feathers everywhere and you earn 10 points a bird :P Pwn3d!
heh
Rabbit season!
How can be sure this isn't just viral marketing for another Angry Birds rip off??
Science, bah! The answer is obvious: it's spring break in Australia and all the birds are trying to hook up and get drunk. What they should be looking for are tiny, soaked T-shirts.
/// Not a super-genius . . . yet. ///
They say they think it is what is making them act this way, how about a confirmation, as maybe there might be some toxic gases or such, that might be affecting wildlife, and just assuming things are one thing instead of having proof, is what they should be going on.
Anybody who has lived near an apple orchard knows all about drunken birds. Apples fall to the ground, ferment as they start to rot, and get eaten by the local bird population.
Bears get drunk on rotting fruit, too. You do not want to encounter a drunken bear!
There's a Prez over in the U.S. that could use some of that. He's been getting by making his own in the White House basaement.