Story of elephants 'drunk' on corn whiskey turns out to be 'unreal'

The story of male elephants that got drunk on 30kg of corn whiskey and passed out in the tea gardens, that went viral across the social media, has reportedly been debunked. The picture which was shared on the microblogging site Twitter by an IPS officer HGS Dhaliwal portrayed two of the elephants who got deviated from their herd in Yunnan province, China, got intoxicated and passed out.

It so happened, that the elephants did enter a village in Yunnan on March 11, there was, however, no evidence that they drank corn whiskey, according to the research, as per the international media reports. Claims have surfaced after a thorough analysis of the incident that a jar of alcohol was knocked over, and yet, remained unconsumed. 

The story first originated from the Chinese app WeChat and intrigued the internet into believing the “adorable drunk elephants” narrative that further spread across other social media platforms. A journalist from a renowned international media outlet shared a post on Twitter citing an old piece that confirmed a different story.

As per the study published in the March/April 2006 issue of the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, the intoxicated elephant myth dated back to the centuries. Steve Morris, a biologist at the University of Bristol in England and a co-author of the study, claimed that it was merely a ‘travellers' tales’ from so long back as 1839. There was nothing in the biology to support the drunken elephant theory, he said. 

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Internet users called the picture "sweet"

The story, however, had sparked laughter across the internet as users cracked jokes and commented that the picture was “extremely sweet”. The users on Twitter had called the passed-out elephants “too cute to handle”. “Trunken party,” and “Elephantine hangover,” among many other comments. The Tweet had garnered over 1.4k likes and 5.8k likes separately. It was retweeted over 1.3k times as it continues to be circulated on social media even now. 

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