Researchers from the Oregon Health and Science University got zebra finches drunk to see how the booze affected their singing in an effort to gain insight into human speech. Guess what? They slurred their songs. From the Washington Post:
Birds learn to sing in much the same way that humans learn to talk (in fact, a recent study found that birdsong and speech even rely on the same genes). It's much easier to keep a bird in a cage and study its brain than it is to do the same with a human toddler, so birds give scientists some of our best insights into the brain mechanisms that make speech possible….
"The most pronounced effects were decreased amplitude and increased entropy," the researchers wrote in the study. So in other words, their songs got quieter and less organized.
