I’m inclined to think it’s akin to recreational drug usage in humans.
Crows are supposedly more intelligent/aware than other animals, and with awareness comes existential dread or whatever you want to call it.
Lots of humans use drugs to alleviate this and I think it’s plausible that crows do something similar. Hopefully I’m wrong and it’s a more uplifting reason.
Crows definitely get drunk, on purpose, by eating rotten fruit & berries, so this is plausible - although formic acid to the skin seems less fun - but then I'm not a crow.
I’m on mobile so I can’t provide you with a good quality reply with sources, but we are taught in medical school that alcohol calories are not metabolized the same way as other nutrition.
In a very back of the envelope kind of way, here’s why: Alcohol is metabolized not as nutrition but as poison, and while yes, ethanol is very calorific, the calories derived from are lost (mostly) as heat. And, because of the metabolic pathways utilized, other important substances required by cells are depleted (products of the Pentose Phosphate Pathway - PPP) in the quest to detoxify alcohol. Running the PPP is generally an energy intense process, so you’re at a net loss when al said and done. This can partly help explain why chronic alcoholics are not overweight. This is excluding the calorie debt owed to repairing cell damage from the cytotoxic effects of alcohol.
If anyone’s interested, I can recommend some Biochemistry textbooks for a deep dive.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, partly thanks to the metabolic reasons, alcohol results in hypoglycemia, so it is unlikely that the bird would experience feelings of satiety after imbibing.
> Being drunk as a bird wouldn't seem to be a good idea from a survival point of view ...
Being drunk as a human is also not a good idea from a survival point of view given how often drunk people kill themselves doing stupid things.
Crows engage in play and form complex plans that show they understand that actions have consequences so it doesn't seem unreasonable that they might occasionally decide to get drunk and roll around on the floor screaming.
In that case, I’m inclined to think it serves one of the utilitarian functions that they mention, as it seems unlikely that all those species would have crow-level intelligence.
Yeah there's an entire BBC doc segment about this in the series 'weird nature'. I think the only one that freaked me out really was how drunk bees get detected by 'bouncer' bees at the hive who rip their wings and limbs off if they come back too wasted
Wait, this is the first I’ve ever heard of drugs being used to alleviate existential dread. I’ve never experienced or understood existential dread, so maybe that is why this seems strange to me, but do you have any sources about your assertion?
Not really, aside from personal experience/observation. Not sure what type of source there would be; perhaps a survey/study of self-reported reasons for drug use?
Surely you’ve heard of drug/alcohol abuse referred to as an “escape”, no? Existential dread/angst is just another thing to try to escape from.
Crows are supposedly more intelligent/aware than other animals, and with awareness comes existential dread or whatever you want to call it.
Lots of humans use drugs to alleviate this and I think it’s plausible that crows do something similar. Hopefully I’m wrong and it’s a more uplifting reason.