Nature's Most Wanted: Trunk and disorderly
episodePreviously titled “Natures Most Wanted: Trunk and disorderly” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 2, 2026
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How much alcohol does it take to intoxicate an elephant?
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It's story time. Tycho Brahe liked to throw a party. Do you know old mate? Yeah, me neither. But he was an astronomer from the 16th century, helped the launch of the scientific revolution. And apparently he lost his nose in a drunken duel with his cousin as they were trying to ascertain who was better at maths. No, I'm better at maths. Yay! After that, he had a prosthetic nose made of brass, that one, for daily wear, but for special occasions, a gold one. Anyway, Brahe was pretty rich. He owned a castle, predicted futures and was passionate about alchemy. And in his day, Tycho Brahe had a pet elk that he used to party with. One dinner party, the elk had too much beer, fell down the stairs and died. An inebriated elk?
Off its chops! What the duck! Welcome to Nature's Most Wanted, a series from What The Duck where I have trawled through the internet like an amateur sleuth to find the most heinous, dangerous, famous and ignoramus crimes committed by animals. You know, roadrunners caught dangerous driving. Silver gulls detained for loitering with intent. I'm Dr Anne Jones, and in previous episodes, we have discussed animals who murder, steal, destroy property and get in the way of the military during wartime. But in this episode, it's criminal mischief and the reasons behind it. Welcome to episode five of this series, which I've called Trunk and Disorderly.
Trunk and Disorderly
Apparently, there's a long historical association between elephants and rock. There's this story from Indian mythology where a drunk elephant misbehaves in a village and it smashes houses and carts and tramples people. And eventually, it's calmed down by Buddha himself, which is pretty amazing. I'm imagining something like Crocodile Dundee with the hang loose hand signal. Seriously though, elephant human conflicts in India is a problem of astounding scale, with an average of 450 human deaths per year across the country. But even more surprising in this nationwide conflict is that alcohol plays a role. For a start, data from the area of North Bengal pointed to about 36% of the people who were killed being drunk.
You know, show-offs, an idiot, a bloke thinking he can take on 18 elephants in a fight, that sort of thing. But the elephants in this equation are not necessarily teetotallers. Something like 8% of the deaths by wild elephants in North Bengal occurred when the human was in their own home and asleep. Many villagers apparently make their own alcohol, fermenting things that they will later imbibe. And so that no one takes their illicit alcohol, they'll drag it inside their house. in the dead of night. The elephants will literally smash an elephant-sized hole in the side of a building because they can smell the alcohol in there and they really feel like a drink. But maybe this whole elephant rating for alcohol thing is only surprising to me because I come from a place where kangaroos punch on rather than where elephants get pissed.
But the internet does indicate to me that there are plenty of stories of animals getting drunk.
I've heard of a moose getting stuck in an apple tree because it was trying to eat the fermenting apples.
A maggoted moose. Marike Janjak is, among other things, a biologist and genomicist.
There are stories about birds, especially cedar waxwings that are birds that occur here in Canada. They're known to eat these fermenting berries.
That happens in Australia too. In Darwin, there is an annual season for legless lorikeets. A pickled parrot may seem comical.
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