The Atlantic gives me only 1 free article a month, so I have to be selective.
(The reason I don’t subscribe, besides money, is there’s no point in linking to sources my readers can’t access. The downside to free links, of course, is that when you click on the link you’re using up your free access, too.)
Choosing between “You Have No Idea How Hard It Is To Get A Hamster Drunk” and “The Gospel of Donald Trump Jr.” was a no-brainer. Hamsters are interesting; Donny T. isn’t. And, anyway, I’m curious; the headline roped me in.
I know, from past experience, how you get a housefly stoned. You live-capture it (easier said than done), put it in a plastic bag, and exhale marijuana smoke into the bag. Before long the housefly will be bouncing around the bottom of the bag, unable to fly.
But until this article appeared, I had no idea how you get a hamster drunk. I had to find out. So come along with me on this, uh, journey.
Apparently hamsters are born boozers: “In the wild, hamsters hoard ryegrass seeds and fruit in their burrows, and they eat this fermenting store as it becomes more and more alcoholic over the winter.” (I didn’t even know there’s such a thing as wild hamsters; I thought they all come from pet stores.)
But captive hamsters are heavy drinkers, too, given the chance. “In the lab, well, they’re pretty happy with Everclear. Given the choice between water and alcohol, they go for the booze,” the article (read it here) says. “‘You just put a bottle of unsweetened Everclear on the cage and they love it,’ says Gwen Lupfer, a psychologist at the University of Alaska Anchorage who has studied alcohol consumption in hamsters.”
What is Everclear? “Everclear is pure alcohol made from fermented grains,” i.e. 190 proof, or 95% alcohol by volume. It’s a commercial product: “Since Everclear is a grain alcohol, it is clear and does not have a smell or taste. Many distilleries use Everclear or something like it as a starting point, as it is a grain alcohol that can be altered, diluted, and then packaged to one’s liking,” according to this source.
Okay, so we’re talking strong-as-moonshine, just so that’s clear.
Hamsters, the article says, are the heaviest drinkers in the animal kingdom. “Humans have known about hamsters’ affinity for alcohol since at least the 1950s, when scientists in Texas found that hamsters could outdrink the common lab rat … [a]nd they can drink a lot before getting drunk.”
Professor Lupfer and her students “rated the animals’ drunkenness on a literal wobbling scale. They scored the hamsters from zero, for ‘no visible wobbling,’ to four, for ‘falls onto side and does not right self.'” (Sounds like some people.) “The hamsters never averaged above 0.5 on the wobbling scale.”
This is who you want to give the keys to when you’re in no shape to drive yourself home. I’m not sure what you should tell the cop. I’ll let you handle that.
Apparently hamsters’ booziness is pretty well know outside the lab science community; Saturday Night Live did a skit about it several years ago. (For a video of actual drunk hamsters, go here.)