In 1984, as part of a study at the UCLA Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, three Asian elephants “with no known history of alcohol use” and seven African elephants from Lion Country Safari were served a “large calibrated drum” of grain alcohol-laced water. The animals tended to wander off, away from the herd. They stood or leaned with their eyes closed or “wrapped their trunks about themselves.” They skipped meals. They didn’t bother to bathe. The matriarch became louder and more aggressive, as did a bull named Congo.
