Daily Express

100 YEARS OLD AND STILL FINDING OUT ABOUT VOLES...

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FURTHER to my comments yesterday concerning research on the effects of giving party drugs to mice … What do you mean, you haven’t read it yet? I go to great trouble to bring you up to date with the most vitally important scientific developmen­ts. You really should try harder to keep up.

Anyway, as I was saying, further to the mice-taking-drugs-at-parties research, my attention has just been drawn to a paper in the journal Frontiers In Psychiatry entitled “Alcohol’s Effects On Pair-Bond Maintenanc­e in Male Prairie Voles”.

As the American authors say at the start: “Alcohol abuse can have devastatin­g effects on social relationsh­ips,” but they quickly point out: “Previously, there has not been an adequate amount of research on the effects of alcohol on opposite-sex pair bonds in rodent models,” which explains their motivation in getting heterosexu­al voles drunk.

As far as I can see, no gay voles were involved in the experiment, presumably because there had already been an adequate amount of research on the effects of alcohol on same-sex pair bonds in rodents.

So what they did was to leave male and female voles together in pairs and give them a week to get to know each other, then give males access to alcohol while some of the females were restricted to water. There was also a control group where none of the voles were allowed alcohol.

The results clearly demonstrat­ed that when a male vole drinks alone, it results in his becoming interested in a wide range of females, while voles that drink together, or remain sober together, are more likely to stay faithful to one another.

I found a couple of voles who had been involved in the experiment, who turned out to be an alcoholic male and a sober female. I asked the male to tell me why he was spending less time with his teetotal partner after the drinking.

“Gissa drink ‘n’ I’ll tell you,” he said with a slurring squeak, so I offered him a solution of 10 per cent ethanol.

“Pour yourself a drink too,” he said, but I declined as 10 per cent ethanol has never been my preferred tipple.

He then showed signs of anger and slammed his drinking vessel down saying, “What sort of vole do you think I am? Do you take me for some sort of drunk? I’m not going to get sozzled on my own.” So I went over to the female vole who seemed very sympatheti­c.

“He did the same with me,” she said. “He just can’t stay off the booze when it’s offered to him but he expects us to join in. I refused, of course. I mean, we’d only known each other for a week. That’s hardly enough to know if it’s safe to go drinking together.”

“I’m told he’d been going out with other women,” I said. “Is that true?”

“I’m afraid so,” she said. “He’s been snuggling up to disgusting females who reek of ethanol but I can hardly hold it against him. I think it’s due to a decrease in oxytocin immunoreac­tivity in the paraventri­cular nucleus of his brain but please don’t quote me on that. Further research is clearly needed.” So I left her to it.

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