Have Some Everclear With Your Hamster

Say what you want about hamsters, but they sure can drink. “You just put a bottle of unsweetened Everclear on the cage and they love it,” Gwen Lupfer, a psychologist at the University of Alaska Anchorage who has studied alcohol consumption in hamsters, told the Atlantic. (Everclear is a grain spirit that can reach 95 percent alcohol, or 190 proof.)

It’s not that the little guys are getting drunk, though. They are more interested in the calories than the buzz. Their digestive systems have evolved to handle the alcohol that forms when the grains they’ve stored for the winter start to ferment. It’s possible that other hoarding animals have a similar adaptation, but they are not so easily studied in the lab.

How much can they drink? In the lab they will consume up to 18 grams of ethanol per kilogram of body weight per day, the equivalent of a human drinking a liter and a half of 190-proof Everclear, or 21 bottles of wine!

Researchers have tried to get them to drink other high-calorie beverages – sugar water, tomato juice, peach, mango, even chocolate milkshakes. Given the choice, they always seem to go back to the hard stuff. Maybe they are interested in the buzz?

Photo credit: Shutterstock via ExplorersWeb