"We can't find anything physically wrong with them, so we believe it might be caused by some sort of a plant toxin they got into their bodies," — Tess Cooper.
Animal shelters in Australia’s Northern Territory are being overwhelmed with parrots that have become so “drunk” on a mysterious food source that they have fallen from the sky.
The red collar lorikeets eat an unknown food, lose coordination and pass out, according to Lisa Hansen, a founding member of the Ark Animal Hospital near Darwin.
“Every day, people hand in more birds that have been found stumbling around on the side of the road, eyes gunky and half-closed, unable to fly,” Paws animal shelter manager Tess Cooper told the Northern Territory News.
Cooper says almost 40 of the lorikeets have been brought in with the same symptoms.
The hung-over birds are fed a diet of fruit and nectar for a few weeks so they can sober up and recover enough to be released back into the wild.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons