General

#Birds high on opioids sing songs that sound like jazz: study

#Birds high on opioids sing songs that sound like jazz: study

August 26, 2020 | 12:57pm

They’re ready for Birdland.

Humans aren’t the only ones who draw musical inspiration from drugs. According to new research, starlings dosed with small amounts of fentanyl belt out “gregarious” songs akin to “jazz.”

“Here we’ve shown that opioids cause singing behavior,” Lauren Riters, a biologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, told the Daily Mail.

While birds have long been known to sing for a soulmate or to mark their territory, the research team theorized that they also chirp for joy as well, such as when they’re in a flock. And these wellbeing-induced warbles sound a lot like “free form songs,” said Riters, who spearheaded the buzzy study published in the journal Nature.

Indeed, unlike the stock mating calls emitted by their counterparts, schooling starlings experiment with “different songs, they order and reorder and repeat song sequences, they add and drop notes,” Riters said.

To first prove that they croon when content, the scientists decorated a space and placed a flock of European starlings inside after they had just sung. They then gave them the option of returning to the adorned birdhouse or an undecorated location. The birds spent longer in the former, suggesting they linked it with the happiness they experienced from singing.

“Our results suggest that birds sing because they feel good, and that singing helps them to maintain this positive state,” said Riters, who postulated that the happy effect was caused by pleasure-linked chemicals in the brain.

The researchers tested this theory by giving the starlings low levels of fentanyl — a widely-abused narcotic known to artificially trigger the reward response generated by socializing, eating and mating. Go figure: the buzzed birds immediately replicated the rapturous chirps heard when they flock.

Not only that, but scientists could even dial down the jubilant tunes by using chemicals to turn off their opioid receptors.

From this study, scientists deduced that opioids may have facilitated these jazz numbers by eliciting natural pleasure chemicals in starlings.

However, the unorthodox research isn’t just for the birds. These ornithological opioid binges are revealing a prehistoric part of the brain “that regulates intrinsically rewarded social behaviors across many animals,” said Riters.

If you want to read more Living News articles, you can visit our General category.

if you want to watch Movies or Tv Shows go to Dizi.BuradaBiliyorum.Com for forums sites go to Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com

Source

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button
Close

Please allow ads on our site

Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker!