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Annual Migrations Explain Why We're New Year's Eve Party Animals

New Year's Eve is upon us, which means over the next few days much of the world will unite by skulling champagne and tequila, kissing strangers and spending the subsequent days of face-melting hangovers resolving to both quit drinking and make out with...

New Year’s Eve is upon us, which means over the next few days much of the world will unite by skulling champagne and tequila, kissing strangers and spending the subsequent days of face-melting hangovers resolving to both quit drinking and make out with more attractive people. There’s never any mention of how arbitrary it all is. I completely understand the value of celebrating a new year and all of its possibilities – and acknowledging that the last one didn’t manage to kill you – but why, out of a 365 day year, is a day in early winter the first day of the year?

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More importantly, why does the majority of the Western world celebrate the same holiday at the same time? Marking the New Year can’t solely be a seasonal thing because the whole southern hemisphere is chilling at the beach right now. I don’t think it’s purely a cultural thing either because there are plenty of other differences between the traditions and holidays of various countries. So is our collective worldwide boozing the expression of some inherent need to group together?

This is what it looks like when humans search for booze.

When I think of the work people put in to get blackfaded on New Year’s Eve, the first animal analogs that come to mind are the vast annual migrations a number of species undertake. They’re all very similar: every year, en masse we all undertake long, arduous searches for vague, as-yet-undiscovered payoffs that have a high likelihood of ending in pain. Partying and migrations do seem similar on the surface, could it be that so much of the world gets permed in unison because of some biological need to move as a group?

Animals migrate for myriad reasons, but we can loosely sort them into three groups: those aimed at finding food, better weather and environments, or a mate. All three of those sound like thing I’ve aimed for when out on the town, but I’m not yet convinced that those are the root cause of coordinated festivities.

If only I had a British narrator following me around at night.

Bad weather often spurs migrations of incredible distances. The lovely monarch butterfly, for example, travels 2,500 miles every fall from soon-to-be-freezing climates in the northern U.S. and Canada down to warmer locations in California and Mexico, which is a phenomenally long journey for such a small, diaphanous creature. I suppose that in the wintry northern hemisphere there’s also a weather-related element to grouping up in warm bars and clubs for libations. As far as the already-warm southern hemisphere is concerned, you could argue everyone going out on the town is a migration to more friendly (drinking) environments. But it seems like a bit of a stretch for me.

Often linked with the search for better weather is the seasonal search for food and resources. Caribou migrate from food-rich and isolated summer ranges in northern Alaska to winter ranges in southern Alaska and Canada to find food sources that aren’t locked within the frozen tundra. If you’ve ever spent a New Year’s Eve wandering from party to party in search of something better, you can probably relate. We all go into New Year’s knowing that there’s some champagne-filled locales out there and spend a good amount of time in packs on the move trying to find them. Still, that’s only part of the equation.

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Since you’re already probably drinking by this point, here’s a whale battle video.

Aside from finding food, animals migrate to reproduce. A lot of baleen whales, like blues, greys and humpbacks, travel thousands of miles globally every year between cold, high-latitude summer feeding grounds in high latitudes and warm, low-latitude winter breeding grounds. Tropical waters don’t offer a lot in terms of nutrients – that’s why they’re so clear – but their warmth is perfect for gettin’ busy. What’s interesting for our purposes is that every year the action is in the same place. While most people aren’t going out on New Year’s trying to get someone pregnant, they do know that it’s a night that they’re guaranteed to find people to get ridiculous with.

In that sense, partying on New Year’s Eve does seem like a migratory experience. You work harder to celebrate because you know that it’s a set day for getting weird with a host of like-minded individuals, just like the caribou and whales know that certain parts of the world are perfect at certain times of the year for pigging out and getting frisky. It doesn’t explain why New Year’s is a holiday in the first place – that’s more the realm of culture and history – but does suggest that, like other animals, we still do respond as a group to certain sets of environmental and social behaviors. It’s just that, instead of trekking for thousands of miles in search of food, we’re stumbling around looking for good times.

Evolution Explains is a periodical investigation into the human-animal (humanimal?) condition through the powerful scientific lenses of ecology and evolution. Previously on Evolution Explains: Why we send lie-filled holiday cards.

Follow Derek Mead on Twitter. Have a question? Write Derek at derek(at)motherboard.tv.