In an indoor flight corridor, Egyptian fruit bats that ate food laced with ethanol flew noticeably slower than when their food was alcohol-free, and their echolocation calls changed too. The experiment, published in 2010 by researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, won the 2025 Ig Nobel Prize in Aviation.
The question behind it has gained new momentum. After urine tests confirmed in February 2026 that wild chimpanzees take in meaningful amounts of alcohol from fermenting fruit, a UC Berkeley biologist said a colleague plans to bring the same test strips to Madagascar to check the urine of wild fruit bats.
