Animal Addiction

Humans are far from the only animals that can experience addictive compulsions and behaviors.

Bats

Bats eat fermented fruit but can maintain their echolocation abilities and coordination in concentrations that would exceed legal limits if given to a human.

Bees

Some studies suggest that bees prefer nectars that have stimulants like nicotine and caffeine.

Birds

The primary way birds come across alcohol is through fermented fruits that have natural ethanol. Cedar waxwings are perhaps the most famous bird known for this, but many species are capable of consuming fermented fruits unwittingly. Unfortunately, flying drunk does not go well, and many of these birds end up crashing to an early death.

Cedar waxwings and American robins have large livers relative to other birds, which means they have a better chance of processing the ethanol from the berries they eat. Ethanol functions more like a high-calorie substance than a toxin. The pen-tailed tree shrew from Malaysia developed resistance to the nectar of bertam palm trees.

European Starlings have a special enzyme that breaks down ethanol 14 times faster than a human liver. Some birds have throats that expand to hold collected fruit, which slows down the rate of ethanol entering the bloodstream.

Red-collared lorikeets have been noted to regularly get intoxicated from the fermenting fruit in northern Australia in certain times of the year, leading to a “drunken parrot season.”

Songbirds have been noted to quickly consume berries and become intoxicated.

Caterpillars

Certain caterpillars like the Eloria noyesi larvae can eat coca because their dopamine receptors are apparently completely resistant to it. This is being explored by Colombian policymakers and researchers who aim to destroy illegal coca plantations.

Cats

Catnip, of course.

Dogs

Here’s a study about “excessive toy motivation” in dogs as a parallel to process addictions in humans like gambling. “Our results highlight parallels between excessive toy motivation in dogs and human behavioral addictions, with dogs as the only non-human species so far that appears to develop addictive-like behaviours spontaneously without artificial induction.” Man’s best friend, truly. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-18636-0 Some have taken to calling these dogs “ball junkies.”

Seriously though, it’s interesting that the animal we’ve domesticated to be most compatible with our understanding of reinforcement-based training also presents with “addiction-like behavior.” Dog brains also use dopamine reward pathways that can be disrupted by addictive stimulus.

It’s also seriously dangerous for the dogs in question. It’s not an exaggeration.

The conventional criteria observed in human addiction (craving, salience, and loss of self-control) are also observed in these dogs. It’s possible for dogs to prioritize the toy over food, rest, and socialization. In extreme cases, dogs can chase toys to the point of exhaustion, joint injury, or heat stroke. When the toy is taken away, the dogs show measurable distress like elevated heart rates and persistent vigiliance. There are even genetic components. Working breeds like Border Collies and Belgian Malinois are more prone to developing these addictive-like behaviors.

Dogs can develop chemical dependencies too, though usually they aren’t exposed to addictive chemicals regularly in a domestic context. If they are, they can also go through withdrawal with symptoms like tremors, agitation, and vomiting.

In some places where toxic wildlife is common, dogs can end up using them for psychoactive effects. Dogs that lick certain cane toads ingest bufotenine, which can cause hallucinations, and they can end up compulsively hunting for these toads even after feeling sick. Dropped fruit that ferments can produce alcohol that wild dogs are known to return to.

Prescription medication can impact dogs just like humans. Benzodiazepines prescribed for separation anxiety or phenobarbital prescribed for epilepsy can induce dependency. If they’re abruptly stopped, digs can experience fatal withdrawals with tremors and seizures.

Although arguably closer to OCD than addiction, compulsive behaviors even extend to self-harm. Some dogs with Canine Compulsive Disorder (CCD) can cause serious self-injury by repeatedly chewing at themselves, swallowing inedible items, or skipping meals and sleep to continue the behavior.

Dolphins

There’s some controversy over whether dolphins use toxins from puffer fish as an intoxicant, but tetrodoxin isn’t really psychoactive or euphoric. In high doses, fatal.

Elephants

This one is also controversial since it became a popular myth that media figures tried to cash in on, not unlike the elephant art crowd. It’s possible elephants consume some bark because it is likely to have toxic bugs that might produce an intoxicating influence, but this seems far from settled. Some elephant stampedes in India have been attributed to intoxicated elephants that binged rice beer.

Jaguars

After chewing on the bark of Yage vines, which are known for being hallucinogenic, jaguars apparently behave similarly to cats who have catnip.

Lemurs

Black lemurs use the toxins from millipedes to produce an effect similar to narcotics, though it also has the practical use of repelling insects that might transmit diseases like malaria.

Monkeys

Vervet monkeys, found in the Caribbean, consistently prefer alcoholic beverages over non-alcoholic beverages likely as a result of acquiring a taste for it through fermented sugar cane juice commonly found in plantations. They even show distributions of moderation, excessive consumption, and teetotalers, and younger monkeys drink more than matured adults.

Reindeer

Reindeer forage for Amanita muscaria, a highly toxic mushroom that is considered unsafe for human consumption. So instead, humans collect urine from deer that eat the magic mushrooms as an intoxicating drink.

Sheep

Wild bighorn sheep will take very risky chances alone to find narcotic lichen, even as it goes against their social inclinations to stick near their heard.

Wallabies

In 2009, the state attorney general of Tasmania, Lara Giddins, remarked to a Parliamentary hearing that “we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles.”

MankNotes

Explorer