What happens when animals party too hard in the Internet age

Maybe you worry about who will see those party photos on your friends' Facebook pages. Well, ours isn't the only species who may wake up to find our drunken embarrassment plastered all over the Internet:

When Per Johansson of Särö, south of Gothenburg, returned home from work on Tuesday it was dark outside and the rain was coming down hard. Suddenly Johansson heard a bellowing noise from the garden next door.

“I thought at first that someone was having a laugh. Then I went over to take a look and spotted an elk stuck in an apple tree with only one leg left on the ground,” Johansson told The Local.

Johansson took pity on the animal and called for help. He and his neighbors tried to saw the branches to make it more comfortable, but it finally required the efforts of the fire brigade to get it out of the tree. Then, rather than running away like a respectable wild creature would, it lay on the ground:

According to Johansson, it looked very much like the elk was severely drunk after eating too many fermenting apples.

Drunken elk are common in Sweden during the autumn season when there are plenty of apples lying around on the ground and hanging from branches in Swedish gardens.

While the greedy animal was reaching ever higher to reach the delicious but intoxicating fruit, it most likely stumbled into the tree, getting itself hopelessly entangled in the branches.

And from what Johansson could gather, this particular animal had been on a day-long bender.

“My neighbour recognised it as the animal that almost ran into her car earlier in the day. She was pretty sure the elk was already under the influence,“ said Johansson.

The hungover elk finally dragged itself away the next morning and is no doubt trying to hide out as photos and reports of its predicament have gone all over the world.

Of course, readers of this blog know that there is nothing unique about this case. We've seen drunk birds, fruit flies, a deer, baboons, a badger, bees, and elephants. (In fact, there is a whole chapter about drunken and other substance-abusing animals in the book. Have you ordered your copy yet?)

But let's also not forget that the last time we reported on a drunk elk in Sweden, it was no laughing matter. In 2009, a man was jailed for ten days for the murder of his wife and only released when cleared by forensic evidence: hair and saliva found on the dead woman's clothes belonged to an elk. The motive was unclear, but police cited the aggressive tendencies of elk drunk on fermented apples.

Mr. Johansson may have meant to do a good deed, but I hope he is watching his back.

Dead drunk

Ever since 3,000 blackbirds fell out of the sky dead in Arkansas on New Year's Eve, there's been talk of a mysterious "aflockalypse."

Suddenly everyone's noticing mass animal deaths: fish in the Chesapeake Bay, crabs in Britain, starlings and other birds in Louisiana and Kentucky, and more all over the world.

Is it the end of the world? No, say spoilsport scientists, these things happen all the time. The US Geological Survey tracks them in the United States,and collects an average of 163 reports every year, according to the Associated Press.

The reasons behind these mass die-offs vary: sometimes pollution, sometimes disease, sometimes extreme conditions, sometimes even foul play, like the 80 bats in Tucson who were shot to death in December.

And sometimes the reason is bad behavior. Authorities in Romania were concerned that dozens of starlings had died of avian flu. But necropsies revealed that the birds had died because of alcohol poisoning after eating fermented grape residue. Yes: they drank themselves to death. This time, they've got no one to blame but themselves.


Drinking bird by Flickr user Seven Morris.

Bad influences

It's been far too long since we called attention to substance abuse in the animal kingdom. Setting a particularly bad example is a chimp in China with a smoking habit. Yes, he died recently, but:

Zoo spokesman Qondile Khedama said Charlie had become an institution, entertaining thousands of visitors every year with his antics.

For years, zookeepers had been trying to get the chimp to kick the habit, and they discouraged visitors from giving him cigarettes.

But Mr Khedama said he did not believe the addiction had ended Charlie's life prematurely, as he had lived around 10 years longer than the average chimp.

And in Austria, some zoo rhinos were directly responsible for enabling one man's drug habit:

An Austrian zoo has fired a zookeeper after discovering that he had been secretly growing a cannabis plantation in the rhinoceros enclosure he was in charge of. It was a clever scheme because the 59-year-old man had exclusive access to the enclosure at Salzburg Zoo, and the presence of the notoriously irritable one-ton beasts was likely to deter the curious.

But perhaps the most disturbing case reported recently is that of a deer at a resort in China. A few months ago, a waitress offered the animal a taste of some beer, and it was the first step on a descent into alcoholism:

Since then, says Zhang, whenever there is any leftover beer she takes it to feed to the deer.

"It has a growing addiction to beer. To begin with it was half a bottle but now it is several big bottles in a row. Her daily feed is around two bottles of beer."

Zhang adds: "I don't know what her maximum appetite for beers is though we once tried giving her four bottles of beer and she drank them all."

Elsewhere the restaurant's chef is quoted:

"It drinks beer quite often. It does not drink water any more, it only drinks beer."

Some say that drug abusers hurt only themselves, but when people foolishly believe that animals are cute and noble, we run the risk of their behavior being used as a role model, especially by innocent youth. What are our children to think when they see Bambi guzzling beer?

Primate perp roundup

The folks in Florida that we read about last time aren't the only ones having trouble with their resident primates.

In South Africa, baboons are attacking the wine industry, stealing tens of thousands of dollars worth of grapes ready to harvest - and it's only the best for these particular primates:

Growers say the picky primates are partial to sweet pinot noir grapes, adding to the winemakers' woe: Pinot noir sells for more than the average merlot or cabernet sauvignon.

"They choose the nicest bunches, and you will see the ones they leave on the ground. If you taste them, they are sour," said Francois van Vuuren, farm manager at La Terra de Luc vineyards, 50 miles east of Cape Town. "They eat the sweetest ones and leave the rest."

Not just thieves, they're also drunkards:

Sometimes the baboons even get an alcohol kick — by feasting on discarded grape skins that have fermented in the sun. After gobbling up the skins, the animals stumble around before sleeping it off in a shady spot.

Vineyard owners try to drive away the monkeys with rubber snakes and annoying noise, which naturally brings out the monkeyhuggers:

"The poor baboons are driven to distraction," said O'Riain, who works in the university's Baboon Research Unit.

Elsewhere, a more personal attack: a disabled veteran was savaged by his service monkey:

Hamerick says it started when he accidentally stepped on Noah's hand or foot. The capuchin snapped back violently, locking down on Hamerick's thumb.

"I just started pulling. Didn't give a d*** if I pulled my thumb off at the time - if there was anything I could do to stop the fight. I needed to stop it."

But the fight didn't end there - Noah kept swinging and biting. Hamerick says it was worse than war, even though he lost an eye in Vietnam.

"I got hit all over my body. That was a breeze compared to my little fight with him. Cut the vein, tore ligaments out of my wrists. I'm pumping blood all over..."

"I'm looking around and saying 'well, never thought I'd go out this way...I'm sitting there thinking I'm going to die."

So what's the victim's conclusion after this vicious attack by an animal he called his "best friend"? If you've been reading this blog you won't be surprised:

Still, Hamerick says, "He's a great monkey."

Label from some winemakers that believe the monkey lies, from Flickr user rbeiber.

Rabbit with a habit

If there's one thing this blog proves, it's that animals have all kinds of vices that you might have imagined were purely human. We've seen animals indulging in lust, vanity, drunkenness, gluttony, laziness, and lying, just to name a few.

There is almost nothing left... almost. But this one surprised even me: a rabbit in England that is addicted to gambling.

This compulsive gambler bunny is obsessed with a slot machine in the pub where he lives in Worcestershire. Pub landlord Ian Randall brought the rabbit indoors to escape a cold snap, and claims that his customers "took to him straight away." Apparently at least one of the rabbit's other vices fits right in: He enjoys cider - which in an English pub, does not refer to a fruit juice for children.

But aside from hogging what they call the "fruit machine," the rabbit has other unseemly behaviors, according to the Worcester News:

As well as trying his luck on the fruit machine Daisy has also been getting fruity with Mr Randall’s sons’ toy rabbit.

"Daisy" is a male, despite the name, and putting that together with the colorful pictures of tasty fruit on the machine and the alcoholic indulgence, he may well be a very confused bunny indeed. But while most of the pub's patrons are tolerant of this lapine interloper, a few of them are not confused at all about the proper way to react:

"There is a handful of drinkers here who would probably rather put him into a stew though,” Mr Randall said.