- Bottom’s up!
Most people enjoy having a drink to celebrate or wind down after a hard day. Occasionally, however, four-legged creatures get into the liquor cabinet as well.
Every now and then, animals happen to gain access to alcohol. It’s usually by accident and the critter has no idea what it’s consuming — but surprisingly, there are also animals that will actively seek out booze.
In either case, the results are usually hilarious.
Here are six stories about animals who got sloshed on pilfered alcohol.
1. Liquor Store-Raiding Raccoon
In early December 2025, an employee went to open a Virginia ABC store in Ashland. When he went in, he found a burglar sleeping in the bathroom after drinking a ton of stolen alcohol.
This burglar, however, was a raccoon.
Apparently, the masked furry rascal had gotten into the space between the liquor store’s roof and ceiling tiles and fallen down. It then went on “a full-blown rampage,” breaking bottles of spirits and drinking their contents.
By the end of its binge, the raccoon passed out in the bathroom between the toilet and a trash can — like a proper drunk. Luckily, the raccoon was perfectly fine after sleeping it off, except maybe a splitting headache in the morning.
2. Pigging Out on Beer
In 2017, a feral pig wandered into a campground near Port Hedland in Western Australia. One group of campers was distracted, and the sneaky pig stole some goodies from their cooler.
Those goodies included three six-packs of beer, which the pig promptly drank.
Anybody would get s***faced from slamming 18 beers, and the pig was no exception. Filled with liquid courage, the pig started running around, tipping over trash cans and eating the spilled garbage.
And, as so many drunk guys do, the pig also started a fight it couldn’t win. By the end of the night, it ended up being chased around a trailer by a cow it had managed to anger.
The next morning, campers found the pig passed out under a nearby tree. A class act, all the way.
3. Sloshed Opossum
Raccoons aren’t the only garbage-loving city dwellers that can break into liquor stores. In 2017, a Floridian opossum did the same thing.
This story is almost identical to the one from Virginia. A raccoon slipped into a closed liquor store through the roof and got drunk.
It caused a lot less destruction, though. The opossum broke only one bottle of booze instead of smashing up the whole store.
Apparently, it could also hold its liquor better than the raccoon, since an employee on morning shift found the critter awake, shivering in place and drunk out of its skull. Luckily, a couple of days on detox at a wildlife refuge helped it sober up and return to its home environment.
4. India’s Alcoholic Elephants
India has an elephant-sized problem with booze. We’re talking about literal elephants raiding rural villages’ stores of homemade alcohol.
For instance, in 2022, a herd of 24 ‘phants in eastern India found several large clay pots of “muhua,” a traditional liquor made from fermented flowers. They drank it all and promptly passed out. They left the next morning only after the villagers came to wake them up by banging drums and pots — which is probably the last thing a hungover elephant wants to hear.
Not all cases of boozing elephants end up so uneventfully, though. In 2007, six elephants that stole pots of rice beer electrocuted themselves to death after they tipped over a utility pole. Meanwhile, in 2019, a herd of 70 elephants raided a store of liquor prepared for an upcoming festival. Their drunken rampage ended up destroying 60 houses and killing three people.
5. Monkey Cocktail Party
On the Caribbean island of St. Kitts lives a population of vervet monkeys. They’re an outlier in that they actively steal alcohol from tourists, specifically so they can get drunk.
The monkeys arrived on St. Kitts with African slaves brought over to work on the island’s rum distilleries. By consuming the fermented sugarcane from the rum-making process, the monkeys developed a taste for alcohol.
Today, they habitually steal fruity cocktails from distracted tourists. Curiously, their patterns of alcohol consumption closely mirror those of humans.
Most of the monkeys drink in moderation, 12% are heavy drinkers, and 5% are dysfunctional alcoholics. However, in areas where tourists don’t drink a lot of alcohol, the monkeys are likely to be teetotalers, preferring to steal soft drinks while avoiding booze.
Monkey see, monkey do, we suppose.
6. Bears and Beers
Even Borthen Nilsen owns a vacation cabin in the northern Norwegian county of Finnmark. In 2010, a shocking sight awaited him when he came to check on his property.
In preparation for the upcoming hunting season, Nilsen had stored a lot of beer at the cabin to share with his hunting buddies. However, a mother bear and her three cubs had broken into the cabin and gotten into Nilsen’s beer stash.
Altogether, the four bears drank about 100 cans of beer. They then proceeded to rip through the cabin and eat everything they could stomach. Before leaving, they all did their business all over the floor.
Speaking to local news outlets, Nilsen said he wasn’t sure which made him feel sicker to his stomach — the thought of what the cabin’s repairs would cost or the stench of bear excrement.
Despite all these animals stealing alcohol, they have nothing on hamsters, which are the heaviest drinkers out of all animals. You might also enjoy our list of animals that regularly get wasted on natural sources.