It’s not hard to find stories of animals getting tipsy. A moose in Sweden was found with its head stuck in a tree after being seen staggering around, eating fermented apples.
Elephants in Botswana getting drunk on marula fruit. My pet rat, who would knock over my home brew and then lick up the spillage. They all seemed inebriated, but were they?
If you know where to look, the natural world is one big pub, with alcohol on tap in the form of fermented fruits, sap and nectar. Much like us, different animals have different tolerance levels.
As a rule of thumb, those that eat fermented foods regularly, metabolise the alcohol more rapidly, and are less affected by it.
Malaysia’s pen-tailed shrew has evolved to survive on the fermented nectar of the bertam palm, and although they regularly consume large amounts – the equivalent of 10–12 glasses of wine, adjusted to body weight – they show no signs of intoxication.
The same is true for the native bats of Central and South America. They often eat fermented fruits and nectar, but can fly just as well when inebriated as when sober – even with blood-alcohol levels that are more than three times the legal human limit.
This is not the case for the cedar waxwings of North America. While these birds eat a lot of regular berries, from time to time they gorge on the over ripe, boozy berries of the Brazilian pepper tree. This rarely ends well.
The birds can’t fly straight and have a tendency to crash into windows and fences.
Tests on birds that have died in this way revealed that their livers had a blood alcohol content of up to 1,000 parts per million – levels that would easily intoxicate a human.
So, three key messages if you’re a waxwing. Never ‘drink’ and fly. Know your limits. And alcohol-free berries are readily available!
This article is an answer to the question (asked by Joshua Newman, Peterborough) 'Can animals get drunk?'
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