No response for failed domain lookup

When trying to get a domain name that doesn't exist, or some sort of problem with the lookup such as below, there is no error response.

$urls = array(
  'http://somethingnonexistant.com/',
);

drupal_http_request returns the following error result:

stdClass Object
(
    [code] => 0
    [error] => php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Name or service not known
)