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Humans aren’t the only ones who draw musical inspiration from drugs. According to new research, starlings dosed with small amounts of fentanyl belt out “gregarious” songs akin to “jazz.”“Here we’ve shown that opioids cause singing behavior,” Lauren Riters, a biologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, told the Daily Mail.
While birds have long been known to sing for a soulmate or to mark their territory, the research team theorized that they also chirp for joy as well, such as when they’re in a flock. And these wellbeing-induced warbles sound a lot like “free form songs,” said Riters, who spearheaded the buzzy study published in the journal Nature.
Indeed, unlike the stock mating calls emitted by their counterparts, schooling starlings experiment with “different songs, they order and reorder and repeat song sequences, they add and drop notes,” Riters said.
To first prove that they croon when content, the scientists decorated a space and placed a flock of European starlings inside after they had just sung. They then gave them the option of returning to the adorned birdhouse or an undecorated location. The birds spent longer in the former, suggesting they linked it with the happiness they experienced from singing.
“Our results suggest that birds sing because they feel good, and that singing helps them to maintain this positive state,” said Riters, who postulated that the happy effect was caused by pleasure-linked chemicals in the brain.
The researchers tested this theory by giving the starlings low levels of fentanyl — a widely-abused narcotic known to artificially trigger the reward response generated by socializing, eating and mating. Go figure: the buzzed birds immediately replicated the rapturous chirps heard when they flock.
Not only that, but scientists could even dial down the jubilant tunes by using chemicals to turn off their opioid receptors.
From this study, scientists deduced that opioids may have facilitated these jazz numbers by eliciting natural pleasure chemicals in starlings.
However, the unorthodox research isn’t just for the birds. These ornithological opioid binges are revealing a prehistoric part of the brain “that regulates intrinsically rewarded social behaviors across many animals,” said Riters.
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08-27-2020 04:28 AM
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So if I take my alto and some fentanyl, do you think I have some chance to become a new Bird ?
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The most amazing thing is there are some researchers somewhere in a lab who have the resources and time to apply studies like this. Yo, what if we shoot up a little bird with heroin and see if it sings jazz. Yea man!! **high fives all around**
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Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
.....And the one researcher says to the other one over a beer after work : " Can you believe we get paid for this ?? "
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"Research"
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Why aren’t animal rights activists protesting this research is the question? I find the research cruel, and I find no humor in it.
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Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
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Originally Posted by 2bornot2bop
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Shouldn’t the headline actually be “Bird High on Opioids Plays Songs that Sound like Jazz?”
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Originally Posted by JFranck
I am saying specifically that you will absolutely not play better on a 'recreational' drug for a sustained amount of time , and probably not more than one Solo.
Why ? Because your motor skills go downhill on opiates or weed as does your ability to 'hear ' in a stable way from your mind , and hold that aural image in place while you are playing it or slightly after you 'hear' it . Playing two parts simultaneously is even more telling .
Also - the 'stoned program ' that becomes electrochemically burned in to your mind ( like a eprom ) is very difficult to erase -
Because ' you ' did not do it yourself .
Drugs like weed , opiates , LSD are one of the most irrational things for a Musician or a Boxer or a Neurosurgeon to use , because they all affect motor skills and time sense in a bad way over a very short time , you might one good lick , or one great left hook at the expense of lower co ordination and blurred sense of time for weeks , months , or years.
The better your chops are and the better your sense of time is , the more you have to lose.
I stopped smoking weed at 19 years old because it wasn't wearing off cleanly. I hated it , lol.
Do NOT fall for this crap if you want to be your best , get endorphins from exercise , meditation , yoga and altered states that you achieve yourself without drugs .
Compare Coltrane to Coltrane
Hendrix to Hendrix
Charlie Parker to Charlie Parker
Straight versus stoned .
Before heavy drugs versus after.
If you want to be extremely good at anything , mind altering self administered , non necessary drugs will only make it more difficult .
If Guitar or Boxing or Pro Football, or Neurosurgery is too easy for you and you want to make it more 'fair' to your competition because you are a genius and far above other World Class Pros ( the top few hundred in History , let's say)-
AND you want to pull yourself down to their level ....
then go ahead .
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I'm not sure I find giving birds small doses of fentanyl to be cruel. I really don't know how it affects them, but my personal experiences with fentanyl were pretty much "meh". When I was working as an EMS helicopter pilot, the med crews administered a lot of it, and the response from the trauma patients was almost always positive - heart rate went down, breathing slowed, they relaxed. I had a minor operation, and when the anesthesiologist came into the prep area to talk beforehand, I asked what was going to be used. When I heard fentanyl, I was interested, because I wanted to know what it felt like. When they started to wheel me to the OR, I saw the nurse push the plunger to give me the fentanyl. I remember the gurney being halfway out the door, and I woke up in recovery. No memory, no good feeling, just nothing. Maybe a lower dose would have allowed me to feel something, but I just went out like a light. And I had exactly the same experience on subsequent operations. I don't get it. So I don't worry much about the starlings. They occupy a place in the environment not so dissimilar to mosquitoes.
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I don't like it as much when birds just sing scales.....
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