The shrew that can drink 'nine glasses of wine' and not get drunk

But the pen-tailed tree shrew can drink most humans under the table.

The tiny creature has a formidable capacity for alcohol, showing no signs of drunkenness despite spending its nights gorging on alcohol-rich nectar.

Scientists used radio tags to track the tiny pen-tailed tree shrews on their flower bud bar crawls and videoed their feeding sessions

Even after the equivalent of more than nine glasses of wine, the animal is still steady on its feet, deftly scaling palm tree ' breweries' for its next nectar fix.

A native of the Malaysian rain forest, the nocturnal shrew is thought to be the only animal - other than humans, of course - to regularly feast on alcohol.

Although it is not entirely clear just how the creature holds its drink, it is thought to metabolise alcohol in a different way to people.

Researchers from Bayreuth-University in Germany established the pen-tailed tree shrew's taste for alcohol during three years visiting the Segari Melintang forest in west Malaysia.

Videos and radio tagging showed the creatures making regular night-time trips to the nectar-filled flowers of the bertram palm.

Each flower bud is a miniature brewery, containing a yeast that turns the nectar into a frothy beverage with an alcohol content of up to 3.8 per cent - similar to many beers.

The researchers, writing in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, say animals just like the shrew were our direct ancestors - so the human taste for alcohol could have its roots deep in evolution.