11-11-2011, 02:56 AM
I just recently watched a BBC documentary made in connection with their Hannibal movie. Now, that's not the first I heard of the idea to get your elephant drunk, but they compared it to humans who become aggressive from drinking.
This made me wonder: not every human reacts the same to inebriation, and I doubt you'd want your elephant to decide he simply wants to have a lie down instead of charging. I also cannot rid myself of the image of a drunk elephant staggering and bumping from left rank to right rank in the famous lines between the maniples at Zama as the legionaries try to get out of the way and the mahout holds on for dear life... :mrgreen:
Seriously though: this topic raises some interesting questions. I'd have to guess, in the absence of any actual medical or veterinary knowledge about alcohol, that a drunk elephant might a) become more aggressive, b) not mind trampling bodies (as has been suggested above), c) ignore that he is being pelted by javelins, d) lose the flight response. It might be the elephant version of Dutch courage. I'd assume the trainers knew which elephant would react in which way, and chose them accordingly.
Still, the ancients had some pretty weird idea about animals that did not always work as advertised. Reading through Pliny's natural history, or through Aelian's books on Animals will give you some of them: although we can assume that people generally do not keep repeating ideas that don't work, it may still have been a simple "belief" (as Duncan said) based on some occasional results and comparison to humans taking a swill before battle.
Just how much wine do you need to get an elephant drunk anyway, without making them even more unpredictable in battle than they already are?
This made me wonder: not every human reacts the same to inebriation, and I doubt you'd want your elephant to decide he simply wants to have a lie down instead of charging. I also cannot rid myself of the image of a drunk elephant staggering and bumping from left rank to right rank in the famous lines between the maniples at Zama as the legionaries try to get out of the way and the mahout holds on for dear life... :mrgreen:
Seriously though: this topic raises some interesting questions. I'd have to guess, in the absence of any actual medical or veterinary knowledge about alcohol, that a drunk elephant might a) become more aggressive, b) not mind trampling bodies (as has been suggested above), c) ignore that he is being pelted by javelins, d) lose the flight response. It might be the elephant version of Dutch courage. I'd assume the trainers knew which elephant would react in which way, and chose them accordingly.
Still, the ancients had some pretty weird idea about animals that did not always work as advertised. Reading through Pliny's natural history, or through Aelian's books on Animals will give you some of them: although we can assume that people generally do not keep repeating ideas that don't work, it may still have been a simple "belief" (as Duncan said) based on some occasional results and comparison to humans taking a swill before battle.
Just how much wine do you need to get an elephant drunk anyway, without making them even more unpredictable in battle than they already are?
M. Caecilius M.f. Maxentius - Max C.
Qui vincit non est victor nisi victus fatetur
- Q. Ennius, Annales, Frag. XXXI, 493
Secretary of the Ricciacus Frënn (http://www.ricciacus.lu/)
Qui vincit non est victor nisi victus fatetur
- Q. Ennius, Annales, Frag. XXXI, 493
Secretary of the Ricciacus Frënn (http://www.ricciacus.lu/)
