SACRAMENTO, CA — Esteemed California State University, Sacramento (CSUS) professor of Biology Shelley Wing recently returned from a 6-year expedition, marking the completion of a project that is sure to be heralded as groundbreaking in the field of entomology. Doctor Wing has spent the last six years traveling to various locations in South and Central America to study the life cycles, behaviors, genetic variations, and “awesome wriggly little bodies” of 43 different species of insect. The data she collected failed to yield any significant data or patterns beyond one surprising and seemingly unimportant avenue of research; an overwhelmingly large percentage of the insect population observed appeared to be intoxicated.
“Yeah, it wasn’t what my team or me [sic] expected at all! And they called me crazy for testing every insect’s blood alcohol! Ha! We spent months capturing, observing, recording, and releasing thousands of insects in dozens of locales, and it’s the strangest thing: they all have extremely high blood alcohol levels. Our samples ranged from 69% to 100% of the insects in a group, with an average of 87% being inebriated with a blood alcohol percentage over 0.7%. Considering that 0.4% starts being lethal for humans, it’s no wonder they don’t survive past a few weeks, max!” Regardless of the species, age, size, or any other measured characteristic, all observed insects had what should have been a lethal amount of alcohol in their systems.
Doctor Wing was unable to offer explanation as to how this lifestyle came to be the standard for members of the class Arthropoda, but notes that it accounts for common behaviors. “You know how lots of bugs will fly aimlessly around in circles, bumping into things and really just going nowhere? Or how they’ll fly in and around your face repeatedly, being super annoying? Well, that’s ‘cause they’re plastered! They simply can’t remember where they are, where they’re going, or even what they’ve been doing from one moment to the next.”
Wing further hypothesizes that many insects’ evolution has been centered primarily around their alcohol obsession. She proposes that mosquitoes evolved specifically to access alcohol in human bloodstreams, but because blood was easier to find, they gradually came to consume it as a “Plan B,” while still favoring blood from inebriated victims. Another of her theories holds that bees produce honey as a byproduct of drinking; they consistently vomit what they ingest because of alcohol, so they developed a way to make the most of it, turning their vomit into a kind of reusable food. Additionally, this new discovery also provides explanation for certain bugs’ fascination with bright lights, the tendency of others to hide from light and sound altogether, and the inability of some to right themselves when fallen, among others.
“It seems as though insect life is entirely dependent on consumption of alcoholic content; for example, insect reproduction appears to be entirely an accidental consequence of extreme inebriation,” reports Matthew Barton, a member of Wing’s research team. “None of the survey participants, even ones that were actually lucid enough to answer the questions, reported having had any desire to have children, yet ended up with several hundred as the result of irresponsible drinking.”
Wing’s team is still unsure of the origin of the vast amounts of alcohol required to supply the estimated 10 quintillion insects currently residing on earth, nor do they know how it is distributed. “It’s one of the great mysteries that we didn’t even know about until now! With time and additional grant money I’m sure we can nail it down and tap into that incredible alcohol network, hopefully making it available for human use.”