shadow

please can anyone tell me the name of this film, it had elephants monkeys and wart hogs eating from a juniper tree and they got very drunk i did tape it when it was shown in the 80s but my husband taped over it and i cannot remember what it was called would love to get a copy if its available, it had a commentary and was i think quite an old film, i believe from what i can remember that it also had something about flamingos in it as well, i would be very grateful if i could at least find out what it was called.

D Cairns

I remember it, don't recall what it was called but think it might have been a Disney production. Elephants can't actually get drunk on fermenting berries (not enough alcohol) so I guess this would have been "staged" by the crew, much as the famous suicidal lemmings were.

Hugo

It was called BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE or ANIMALS ARE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE and was made in South Africa in 1974

NappieB

Hugo's correct about the title. Made by veteran South African film maestro Jamie Uys and shot mostly in South West Africa (now Namibia).

And yes, Elephants DO get drunk on fermenting berries of the Mopani tree. Ther reason is they eat so many of them (about 300 lbs at a time!!) and the berries are already "heat-activated" so to speak. The sugar content and unusual abundance of natural enzymes speed up the fermentation effect considerably! The berries of the Marula tree produce the same effect. Elephants start to browse the fruit in the early morning (usually around late February to mid April in most locations) and by late afternoon are already staggering around. The effect lasts about 24 hours.

I've actually witnessed this in South Africa, Botswana, Angola and Tanzania during the 70s and 80s.

Monkeys eat much less of the berries (obviously!) but they get intoxicated nevertheless because the berries they eat are "over-ripe" and foraged from the ground.

"The future is yet to come" - George W. Bush

penfold

I remember seeing this at the cinema....it was supporting something child friendly (Being 10 or 11 at the time...) possibly the Disney animated Robin Hood. The fruit in question was a sort of apricot-yellow.

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

D Cairns

NappieB, you should tell these guys:
Elephants Drunk in the Wild? Scientists Put the Myth to Rest

batman

The most amusing bit was watching the monkeys suffering from the most awful hangovers the next day.

Bats.

"Do you know why fattries are called fattries .... it's because they are big and people make things in them."

penfold

The article seems based on how, because scientists can't work out how it happens, it doesn't happen.....despite 170 years of written evidence and filmic evidence we have seen. Or are they suggesting the filmmakers took tankerloads of Wadworths 6X or equivalent into the jungle in order to get a herd of elephants drunk??

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

Steve Crook

Is there any connection between this story (true or not) and "elephant's trunk" being cockney rhyming slang for "drunk"? As with most cockney rhyming slang it is then shortened to just "elephant's" as in "I was a bit elephant's last night".

Steve

Aaryk Noctivagus

OK. If its not possible for Elephants to get drunk, but eye-witnesses have seen a similar effect upon elephants while they eat the fruit... what is the answer.

Presuming the film-maker's and eye-witnesses are not lying or stretching the truth... Something other than drunkeness by alcohol is in play.

We can presume if there was a natural drug in the fruit, we would know of that because the fruit is used for making alcoholic beverages... and such would have an affect beyond normal drunkeness.

However, different creatures know different effects from chemicals in food. An easy example being red berries that are poisonous to people, get eaten naturally by birds without harming them. What may drug on creature may remain neutral to another.

The science in the article only examins alcohol. That is the weakness in that research. They should not discount eye-witness accounts on the presumptions that the effects witnessed are due to alcohol. It may be a non-alcohol related effect... and until such is examined, the eye-witnesses need not be doubted - even though the research roundly condemns the presumption that the effect is from alcohol.

Here are the options as I can see them.

• The Scientific research is flawed.
• The Eye-witnesses are lying (photographic evidence appears to rule this out).
• A non-alcoholic chemical is in play which effects animals and not people.
• Something other than the fruit is causing the effect - perhaps mildly poisonous lavae within some of the fruit or something picked up with the fruit.
• It is something to do with the biology of the creatures effected.

I'm sure there are other options.

Steve Crook

• The elephants are pretending to be drunk just to fool the documentary makers

Steve

D Cairns

It's TOTALLY possible the docu makers just got the elephants sloshed on Gordon's Gin or something: remember the Disney film where they tossed the lemmings over a cliff? There have been numerous such abuses in this history of documentary.

But if there are lots of witnesses, including boardmembers here (a fastidiously honest bunch) then I'm inclined to believe it must be so. Aaryk offers several convincing explanations of how to square the science with the observation.

shadow

thanks for the replies, the elephants certainly looked pretty drunk, i cannot imagine how this could have been stage managed, or at least i hate to think how it could have been stage managed, but stranger things have happened, thanks again for the information at least i now know what the film was called, it has driven me mad for years, shadow.

DB7

You've seen that episode of Blackadder where Cpt Darling says "Good luck against those elephants!"

People can fake allsorts.

Steve Crook

They can, but Bertie Bassett doesn't like it if they do

Steve