[In a continuing effort to help make you the most entertaining guy at the party, here is another cocktail party conversation starter.]

Ever wonder why your usually easy-going buddy turns into a raging, foaming-at-the-mouth, maniacal asshole looking to fight anyone who looks at him wrong, once he has a few drinks in him? It may not be that his girl left him for his boss, it may be that he has a "violent drunk gene."

According to the UK Telegraph, a team of researchers sequenced the DNA of a number of impulsive volunteers and compared those sequences with DNA from an equal number of non-impulsive people. And they found a genetic mutation in the impulsive brains that caused impulsive and violent behavior, get this, once alcohol was added.

Dr David Goldman at National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in Maryland said, "Carriers of the (mutated gene) who had committed impulsive crimes were male, and all had become violent only while drunk from alcohol." (Wait, so you mean all these years that "Instant Asshole, Just Add Alcohol" t-shirt had it right?)

Apparently the gene affects serotonin production in the brain, which controls behavior. And when researchers did tests on mice, knocking out their equivalent gene, the mice also became more impulsive. With one mouse grabbing a baseball bat, and confronting a researcher demanding to know why he was "eyeballing his girlfriend." (I made that last part up.)

(Via Asylum)