Do animals consume stimulants and intoxicate themselves too?
Today, most of us have contact with some stimulants on a daily basis. Some of us drink coffee every day, we see people smoking cigarettes on the street, people drinking alcohol in every restaurant on every even small event and we hear about many cases of drug abuse and consumption. But are we the only species on this planet, which likes stimulants? Actually, stimulants were "discovered" by animals first. There's a legend about "the dancing goats" which says that the coffee beans have been discovered in Ethiopia by some goat herder, who saw that his goats are acting weirdly after consuming some red berries with coffee beans inside, they were dancing and running around, curious goat herder decided to try this strange berries he had more energy than ever, and that's how the coffee beans where discovered. In South Africa, local legend says that elephants like to drink slightly fermented juice to intoxicate themselves, and it was researched in 1830 by French naturalists and it was actually confirmed that: "The elephant has in common with a man a predilection for a gentle warming of the brain induced by fruit which has been fermented by the action of the sun."
But not only these two species of animals are likely to consume substances that intoxicate them. Even our pupils like to consume stimulants, for example, catnip seems to attract cats by giving them extreme pleasure.
A really interesting study was conducted on vervet monkeys, that live in an environment dominated by sugar cane which was a treat for monkeys when it was occasionally fermented before harvest. Studies found out that almost one in five monkeys prefer the cocktail of alcohol mixed with sugar water than sugar water, and also it is much more preferred by younger individuals. This behavior is similar in many species of animals, so we are not the only one who likes intoxicating themselves.
Why do they do it? and why actually do we do it? This behavior is caused by our "reward system" in our brain which sends us feel-good signals from doing something which gives us pleasure and allows us to repeat these actions. Because of it, we crave these things who intoxicate us in a good, funny way or make us feel different, that's why stimulants are so popular in our and animals world.
Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140528-do-animals-take-drugs
https://archives.drugabuse.gov/blog/post/so-why-do-people-drugs
It's all really interesting: crazy goats and drunk elephants. But your post is way too long!
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