12 Animals That Literally Get Drunk As A Monkey

Australian red-winged parrots have apparently developed a taste for their own version of Mango White Claw: fermented mangoes with high alcohol content. Mangoes in particular have so much sugar that they make a hell of a cocktail, enough to leave the parrots in question unable to fly, or do so without colliding with things.

If you want to kill slugs, leaving out a bowl of beer attracts and drowns them. It also opens an impromptu bar for local hedgehogs, who love to get in a couple sips and then settle in for a bubbly little nap.

Many species of the closest animal to us evolutionarily have started experimenting with substance abuse. They grow up so fast! They’ll take it any way they can get it, whether it’s via fermented food like others on this list, or just straight-up snatching cocktails from tourists.

Pretty much the last animal you’d want exhibiting lack of balance, elephants unfortunately do have reported instances of getting sloshed. In one story, a herd went in on a stockpile of alcohol a village had been saving for a festival, and destroyed 60 homes while smacked out of their gourd.

This doesn’t seem as species-wide as it is one member that discovered the power of hooch. Still, you have to love a story of a bear that raided camper coolers, drinking specifically Rainier-brand beer, and then was found passed out on a lawn. They’re just like us!

Another individual achievement in animal alcoholism was a badger in Poland that was literally found passed out surrounded by seven beer bottles, which they think he stole from a beach. It took him two days to sleep it off.

Moose in Sweden (elk in their parlance) have a taste for, basically, unrefined hard cider. They gobble up fermented apples off the ground and get sufficiently twisted to, on some occasions, get stuck in a tree.

New Zealand has its own species of pigeon, known as the kereru, and they make the NYC variety seem like model citizens. Kereru apparently love to get a good BAC from overripe fruits, leading to them passing out and falling out of trees.

Cedar Waxwings eat berries, and a whole lot of them. Double their own weight in them, in fact. So when those berries happen to be fermented, what you end up with is a thoroughly soused flock.

Given that they were simple songbirds, they probably didn’t understand that by living in Vienna, they had access to some of the world’s best beer. Instead, they found fermented berries and went to town, getting so wasted that 40 died from flying straight into windows.

Tree sap and fruit are two things that are perfectly capable of turning into alcohol, something that hungry bees have discovered. Some bees get so blasted that the hive won't let them back in until they've slept it off.

The pen-tailed shrew puts down an absolutely ridiculous amount of alcohol for its size, drinking loads of fermented flower nectar with a 3.8 percent ABV. They’re known, though, for being able to hold that liquor, seemingly having evolved to be able to ingest large amounts of booze without effect.