It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.

Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.

Thank you.

 

Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.

 

Drunken elephant stories debunked.

page: 1
0

log in

join
share:
Umbrax

posted on Dec, 21 2005 @ 07:08 PM
link   
*

There is an old story that Elephants get drunk when they eat fermented fruit rotting on the ground. A recent study debunks the drunken elephant tale.


www.sciencedaily.com

Folk lore has it elephants can get drunk by eating fermented fruit rotting on the ground, but a study debunks that claim, despite "eyewitness" accounts.

The study -- to appear in the March-April issue of the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology -- says anecdotes of drunken elephants go back more than a century.

Steve Morris, a biologist at the University of Bristol in England and a co-author of the study told National Geographic News, "People just want to believe in drunken elephants."

The tales say elephants eat rotten fruit that falls from African marula trees, a member of the same family as the mango.

But Morris says it's unlikely an elephant would eat fruit if it were rotten, more-or-less wait for it to ferment.

In any case, producing a liter of marula wine requires 200 fruits. So an elephant would have to eat more than 1,400 well-fermented fruits quite quickly to start to get drunk.

National Geographic News commented: It may make for a good story and a durable myth, but you're not likely to ever see a drunken elephant sitting under a marula tree.


Please visit the link provided for the complete story.


*Image from planetzot.com.


spacedoubt

posted on Dec, 21 2005 @ 07:46 PM
link   
Seems instead they may be slightly poisoned by
an ihabitant of the same tree...

A beetle pupa, which is used to make poison arrows..
drugged or drunken?



new topics
 
0

log in

join


The Above Top Secret Web site is a wholly owned social content community of AboveTopSecret.com.

This content community relies on user-generated content from our member contributors. The opinions of our members are not those of site ownership who maintains strict editorial agnosticism and simply provides a collaborative venue for free expression.

All content copyright 2024, AboveTopSecret.com