Drunk birds slur songs just like us

Sometimes science means getting a bunch of finches sloshed. Or at least giving them blood alcohol levels of about .08 per cent, which is pretty crazy by bird standards.

In a study published in PLOS ONE, researchers from the Oregon Health and Science University tempted zebra finches with spiked juice - but not because they wanted to help the lab animals ring in the new year in style.

The researchers study birdsong to learn more about human speech, as birds learn to sing in much the same way humans learn to talk. In fact, a recent study found birdsong and speech even rely on the same genes.

It's much easier to keep a bird in a cage and study its brain than it is to do the same with a human toddler, so birds give scientists some of our best insights into the brain mechanisms that make speech possible.

If you've ever talked to someone under the influence of alcohol, you know that it makes speech more difficult.

But there hasn't been much research on vocal impairment caused by alcohol - mostly because scientists have so few non-human lab animals capable of "speech" to work with.