Oriental Hornet (Vespa orientalis) Photo by By Charles J. Sharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography.co.uk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109396802

Dear Readers, you might remember that my Dad was a gin distiller for Gordon’s Gin. He travelled all over the world making up batches of the concentrated flavour that made Gordon’s unique, and then the local workers would dilute it with alcohol and sell it in the distinctive green bottles. As a result, Dad spent a lot of time around people who enjoyed alcohol, sometimes a little too much. And so he made sure that my brother and I were introduced to a little tipple early, so that we’d get used to how it made us feel.

Sometimes these experiments went awry, like the time he came back from Jamaica with a recipe for Caribbean cocktail, which combined gin, rum and a lot of pineapple. He made a ‘weak’ one for my brother and I (aged 15 and 13 respectively). The last thing I remember before passing out on the sofa is my mother asking Dad exactly how much booze he put in the drinks, and Dad shamefacedly replying ‘Only a little bit’.

Still, when I got off to University I thought I knew all about how to handle my drink, and I probably did until the unfortunate incident with the Dorset cider and the drinking game, that ended up with me being practically carried home. It was twenty-four hours before I stopped feeling nauseous and my head stopped pounding. If ever I’d known that alcohol was actually poisonous, I finally felt it in every pore of my body.

Which is a long-winded way to say that most animals can’t actually tolerate a lot of alcohol, including human beings. We’ve all seen the stories about drunken elephants feasting on fermenting amarula fruit, or Bohemian waxwings laying on their backs while sleeping off too many overripe berries. So it was a surprise this week to read that the Oriental Hornet (Vespa orientalis) (nb this is not the Asian Hornet that beekeepers are so worried about) can happily feed on 80 percent alcohol without any change to its behaviour or lifespan. To put this in context, this is four times stronger than any alcohol found in nature, and even animals that eat a lot of high-alcohol foods, such as fruit flies and tree shrews, can’t cope with more than 4 percent alcohol.

So, what’s so special about the hornet? The scientist conducting the study, Sofia Bouchebti of the University of the Negev in Israel, has identified that the hornet’s genome  contains between 2 and 4 copies of a gene that helps to break down alcohol into energy-providing sugars, and the hornet’s gut contains brewer’s yeast, which might further help in the process.

Whatever the reason, the Oriental Hornet (and possibly other hornet species) has found a way to live on something which is  poisonous to other creatures but is also extremely nutritious.  It would be like me living on methylated spirits without any damage to brain, body or long-term prospects. I’ve always thought that hornets were extraordinary creatures, and so they are.

You can read the New Scientist article here and the research paper here.