Larry, You nailed it. I had forgotten you were in the Fruit and Vegetable department of Cornell University! The fruits will contain some amount of moisture, I think in crab apples there is much higher water content, almost 50 to 60% (at least in my fruits). I was going to write this but decided against it, so I discarded the email I had written.
Also, if the stomach contents are drier then the snow or water will help the stomach contents to become softer and easily digestible, so may be birds were not thirsty, but they "knew" that the food becomes palatable by moistening it. So technically you are right about concentrated juices. And secondly alcohol content raises another point. The melting point of alcohol solution (with fruit contents) is much lower than pure alcohol and alcohol itself has much lower melting point (-116 oC)than water (0 oC). So it makes the fruits/and contents lot more easily drinkable? I have been thinking of checking out the sugar contents of the fruits (crab apple) at various stages as to know when is the fruit best edible. Just a few thoughts of mine! Cheers Meena -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of W. Larry Hymes Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2014 11:40 AM To: CAYUGABIRDS-L Subject: [cayugabirds-l] Inebriation in birds I recently wrote about cedar waxwings consuming snow, while at the time they were eating the dried fruit of Korean Ash. I raised the question whether they were perhaps doing this to dilute the alcohol in the fruit. Kevin expressed the opinion that there would be no juice, fermented or otherwise, in the fruit. He then asked, if I had ever gotten drunk eating raisins. The answer to that is no, particularly since raisins are _not_ made from overripe fruit. As to his statement about no juice being in dried fruit, there is some water content in raisins (up to 15%), although, of course, that is controlled in the drying process. If there were no moisture at all in raisins, it would be like eating hardtack! I would hazard to guess that there is some residual water, albeit very little, in naturally dried fruit. As I understand, alcohol is produced as fruit becomes over ripe. As moisture leaves the fruit, the alcohol will become more concentrated, with the highest concentration occurring during the winter months. The alcohol may help to preserve the fruit. I recall reading a post to Cayuga Birds long ago about someone observing unusual behavior in robins that had become tipsy from eating overripe fruit. Since cedar waxwings feed exclusively(?) on fruit, I could imagine that they could be more susceptible to becoming inebriated, if they were to consume fruit that has alcohol concentrated in it. This can be dangerous for the birds, since it makes them more susceptible to predation, and if they were to consume enough of it, they could die. All this made me wonder whether waxwings could have developed an adaptation for consuming water when eating overripe fruit in order to dilute their "drink". Kevin may well be right that the birds coincidentally were very thirsty at the same time they were consuming the fruit. By the way, I have no idea what the alcohol content might be in dried, overripe fruit of Korean Ash. I have not bothered to do a taste test! Does anyone know someone who might be willing to run an analysis? Larry -- ================================ W. Larry Hymes 120 Vine Street, Ithaca, NY 14850 (H) 607-277-0759, [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> ================================ -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ -- -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
