Drunk bats fly right

Drunk bats have no trouble flying under the influence, a new study says.

Tropical bats of Central and South America regularly eat fermenting fruits and nectar. But they can fly and use their built-in "sonar" just as well while inebriated as while sober — even with blood-alcohol contents that would exceed legal limits for people.

"We went into the study fully expecting that some of the species wouldn’t be able to hold their drink," said study co-author Brock Fenton, a biologist at the University of Western Ontario in Canada.



But "the bats, unfortunately, hadn’t read the proposal," he said.

The team also discovered that the bat species had varying blood-alcohol contents, suggesting a spectrum of tolerance.

Fenton compared such variation to people, saying there are some who just "sniff the cork [and] they’re gone and others who can soak up two or three bottles and don’t show any sign of impairment."