Animals often act like humans. Hell, my dog acts so human sometimes I forget that he’s just a bunch of pine cones I stapled together. Â But when we think of animals acting human, we often think of dogs sitting on couches, or cats wearing hats. We rarely consider animals partaking in human activities like enjoying a little bit (whole lot) of alcohol after a hard day. Animals such as…

Swedish Moose

A Swedish man returned home from work only to discover a moose stuck in his neighbor’s tree, with only one hoof remaining on the ground. Â Moose, or as they are known in Sweden, “elk,” are known to get a little tipsy in the autumn, from eating fallen apples that have fermented. This critter got a bit greedy, and tried to pick some apples off of the tree before getting stuck.

Despite it’s best drunken efforts, the moose/elk (mooselk?) was unable to get out of the tree. Â The man called the police, who sent a “hunter” that arrived with a saw. Â Hunter apparently also means something completely different in Sweden. Â I’m not sure what it means, but I know it doesn’t mean “competent,” as a fire brigade had to be called in to bend the tree over enough to free the moose.

Bats

Humans have it easy–we’re free to get as drunk as we want without having to worry about predators eating us (unless we get too shit-faced and pass out in a zoo). Â Bats, on the other hand, have plenty of natural predators–yet they’ve been known to eat quite a bit of fermented fruit anyway.

Researchers were curious about this, and tested the performance of inebriated bats. They fed them alcohol, then took saliva swabs to determine the bats’ blood alcohol concentration, because there.’s simply too much irony involved in a human drawing blood from a bat. The results? Many bats had around 110mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood. Â This is enough to make a person visibly drunk.

So what happened when they were subjected to the maze? They”¦ did just as good as the test group that didn’t receive alcohol. Â Researchers concluded that they either process alcohol extremely quickly, or just have a high tolerance.

Tree Shrews

The West Malysian rainforest is home to a very thorny plant known as the Bertam Palm, and the tree shrews love that shit. Â With an alcohol concentration of up to 3.8%, the nectar from its flower buds is essentially nature’s version of Everclear.

They’ve been observed to drink enough of it to intoxicate a human. They regularly drink the equivalent of 9 beers in one night, going back for seconds or even thirds (just like dad!). Â In addition to drinking the sweet alcoholic nectar, they pollinate the plant (so they’re more productive than dad).

Here’s the thing–they don’t even really get drunk. Â They’ve been confirmed to have a BAC several times the legal limit and shown no signs of intoxication. This is particularly interesting because the Tree Shrew is very closely related to the last common ancestor of all living primates, which may explain the alcohol tolerance of humans. So you can now blame this guy for your alcoholism rather than blaming your dad.

Matt Pass is an animal who likes to get drunk, as shown by his writing abilities. Follow him on email or send him a twitter.