The shrew lives in the forest of Malaysia and feeds on the flowers of the bertam palm. Produced year-round and constantly fermenting, its nectar is about 3.8 percent alcohol — roughly equivalent to a Sam Adams light.

“Fine,” you say, “except that’s a light beer!” But cut the shrew some slack — it doesn’t eat anything else. Let’s see you subsist on nothing but beer, light or not, and stay sober.

That’s the shrews’ most amazing quality: they don’t get drunk. On any given night, said researchers in a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one-third of the shrews have a blood-alcohol level that would leave us under the bar — but there’s no evidence of intoxication.