Insects get drunk. Elephants get drunk and everything in between. Is it the only chemical that has this type of effect on everything that consumes it?
In: 42
[removed]
Ok I’m not sure how ELI5 this answer will be, but I’ll try and I’m happy to clarify anything.
Alcohol acts as an intoxicant for a few reasons. First it can pass the blood brain barrier in humans and virtually all mammals, and for animals without such a barrier it’s even easier for them to become intoxicated. Second, alcohol binds to receptors in the central nervous system that would normally bind to a substance called GABA, which is the primary way these nerve cells are down regulated in all mammals (and quite a few other animals besides). That depressive action is what leads to most of what we call getting drunk.
Humans, and in fact all animals, share a LOT of the same basic genetic information which codes for metabolism, basic functions of life, and neurotransmitters like GABA. The use of things like chloride channels is almost universal, unless there’s a specific selection pressure to alter it (such as an evolutionary arms race with a neurotoxin).
Alcohol is by no means the only things that is universally intoxicating either, for the reasons mentioned above about conservation of genetic material coding for basic functions. Some animals such as humans, which have an evolutionary history of eating overripe fruits, have evolved metabolic means (in the liver) to rapidly break alcohol down using an enzymatic pathway. For animals like elephants, they lack that same robust response, so a much smaller amount of alcohol will be more intoxicating to them, and leave them incapacitated for a longer period of time.
[removed]
The chemical makeup of alcohol contains a carbon – oxygen – hydrogen bond which is literally a poison. So you are not drunk, you are reacting to poisoning yourself. Sounds dramatic, but this is one poison that affects most living things and why you can die from it, plus it’s effects on most bacteria / viruses
Alcohol is an interesting drug. First of all, it can readily be made into energy, so creatures of all sorts are evolutionarily rewarded for craving it. However, being a metabolic waste product of yeast, it’s also inherently kind of toxic, so there needs to be some sort of “too much of this is a bad thing” trigger in the brains of the creatures that seek it out. Being a little drunk is fun, being really drunk is less so. Secondly, it’s a very simple chemical. Compare the chemical structure of alcohol with LSD and the difference is clear. The upshot of this is that big complicated chemicals tend to be more specific about the structures with which they can interact while simple chemicals can interact more broadly. Biophysically, this is because bulkier, “fat” molecules tend to get in their own way when reaching for the “active sites” of things like, for instance, drug receptors in the brain, unless those receptors have evolved to fit the fat molecule. For these reasons, alcohol broadly messes with organisms in a way that is fun.
Latest Answers