The appeal of naturally occurring alcohol has not yet been
investigated because, in the handful of previous studies,
animals expressed no interest. Anthropologist Katherine Milton
of UC Berkeley surveyed primate researchers, working with 22
species, on whether they had seen animals reach for fermented
fruit. All said they had not. Scientists at Israel’s Ben Gurion
University of the Negev studying bats reported that the animals
shunned foods with elevated alcohol concentrations, despite
higher sugar levels. Perhaps this is because, says animal
physiologist Berry Pinshow, a co-author of that study, “a drunk
bat is a dead bat.” And the oft-heard tales of elephants getting
sloshed off the fermented fruit of marula trees in South
Africa’s Kruger National Park? Pure fiction. Physiologist Steve
Morris of the University of Bristol in England calculates that,
based on elephant size and metabolism, along with the alcohol
content in fermenting marulas, an average elephant would have to
eat more than 700 individual fruit