Snakes are pretty mysterious but very interesting. You might be wondering if they can get drunk as some animals can. How do animals get drunk in the wild, and why? How would alcohol affect reptiles?
Alcohol can affect snakes and other reptiles, but they don’t consume any. In nature, alcohol comes from rotten and fermented sugars in fruits, for example. It primarily affects herbivores, especially those with a suppressed or dysfunctional ADH7 gene, like guinea pigs and horses.
This article discusses how animals get drunk and which ones are sensitive to it. We’ll talk about the gene that affects alcohol tolerance. Lastly, we’ll discuss how this affects snakes and other reptiles.
How Does Alcohol Affect Snakes?
There’s little information about the effects of alcohol on snakes because they are not known to consume it. Animals can get drunk, usually on naturally-occurring alcohol. Alcohol consumption and tolerance are different for various animals.
What Do Animals Get Drunk On?
Unless fed alcohol, animals can only get drunk on rotten or fermented fruits and other sources of sugar. This is part of alcohol production, like grapes in wine. In nature, the sugar in foods is broken down by airborne yeast and turned into alcohol.
This is how animals get drunk; they eat rotten and fermented fruits and other foods without realizing what they can do to their body. It has a similar effect on them as alcohol does on humans. The difference is they can’t control the amount of alcohol they consume and can get very drunk.
Which Animals Get Drunk on Naturally-Occurring Alcohol?
The animals known to get drunk are mainly herbivores. Bigger animals usually have bigger livers, so it takes a lot of fruit to get them drunk, but there have been stories of drunken elephants causing havoc. How is that possible?
Some animals have a gene that helps break down alcohol so they won’t get drunk that easily. In other animals, that gene is suppressed or dysfunctional, including the following:
- Elephants
- Guinea pigs
- Horses
- Beavers
- Armadillos
If you want to learn more about the ADH7 gene, you should read this article. The article discusses experiments and scientific research into the gene and how animals process alcohol.
Other animals reportedly seen drunk are birds, elks, moose, and cows.
Human Alcohol Tolerance
Based on the information above, you would probably assume the gene is suppressed or dysfunctional in humans because of how easily we get drunk, but the opposite is true. Mutations of the ADH7 gene have allowed us to process alcohol quite efficiently.
Humans have a high alcohol tolerance, but it doesn’t take much for us to get drunk. Elephants and horses getting drunk doesn’t sound too surprising after learning that.
Does Naturally-Occurring Alcohol Affect Snakes?
Snakes are carnivores; they only eat meat as a source of nutrients. Snakes cannot get drunk on these fermented and rotten fruits and other sugar-rich foods because they aren’t consuming them.
How Would Alcohol Affect Snakes?
Unless you start force-feeding snakes alcohol, they won’t get drunk. It would affect their brain and body if you forced alcohol on them, which you should never do because it’s cruel and unnecessary. Reptiles can get drunk, but they don’t.
Like most animals, snakes don’t like the smell or taste of alcohol. You might’ve tried to let your pets, like dogs or cats, smell an alcoholic drink and seen a disgusted reaction to the scent.
Even if your tried force-feeding snakes alcohol (or anything else for that matter), they would undoubtedly put up a fight.
Snakes have enormous livers, something you can base alcohol tolerance on. A bigger liver (if healthy) usually means a higher alcohol tolerance.
Reptile-Infused Liquor
Venomous snakes are sometimes used in traditional Chinese liquor. The drink would offer health benefits. You might’ve heard about the liquor before, but did you know that the snakes are often put into the bottle alive? The snakes are practically drowned in the alcohol.
There have been stories about people opening liquor bottles after steeping for several months and the snake coming back to life as if it was in a dormant state for the entire time.
Biologists don’t support that idea because reptiles need constant oxygen to survive, which they don’t have submerged in a closed bottle filled with alcohol. The snake most likely gets drowsy from the alcohol and succumbs to the lack of oxygen. Snakes can survive low-oxygen environments but not a complete lack of oxygen.
Final Thoughts
Alcohol would affect snakes and other reptiles if they were to consume it somehow, but they don’t. Snakes won’t eat fermented or rotten fruits and other sources of sugar because they are carnivores, so they can’t get drunk on them.
Other animals have been reported drunk, like cows, birds, elephants, and moose. Those animals have a suppressed ADH7 gene.