Drunk birds are wreaking havoc in Minnesota | Popular Science
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Anecdotes abound of other animals accidentally getting drunk on fruit. After a few too many fermented apples, Swedish moose have reportedly ended up in trees, and even in a ménage à trois. Scientists are skeptical though. Sure, birds gorging on berries can get buzzed, but can a few dozen apples affect a hulking thousand-pound moose? Unlikely, say a dozen Swedish researchers.
It’s basically the same story for that towering lush, the elephant. The marula fruits of Africa do ferment to about 7 percent alcohol in the right circumstances, but an elephant would need to eat 1,400 in a day to get the 55 liters of hard fruit juice it needs to feel the effects. Other stories of the beasts breaking into moonshine reserves and going on drunken rampages rest largely on circumstantial evidence. In experiments, elephants begrudgingly accepted sugar water cocktails of 7 percent ethanol or less, but only after researchers deprived them of water for 12 hours. And the animals refused to drink anything stiffer than 10 percent, even when parched.
With the creatures too big to get drunk off fruit and too alcohol-averse to drink booze by choice, Jensen suspects that most of these rampaging elephant and moose stories come from people watching animals act in weird ways and jumping to conclusions. “They’re trying to understand the animal’s context with the limited tools of human circumstance,” he says.