Scientists ran the numbers on marula-drunk elephants in 2006 and called it a myth; a 2020 genetic study reopened the question
The elephant on the Amarula label is not there by chance. The South African liqueur is made from marula, the fruit of a tree native to Africa and a relative of the mango, and marula is the star of one of the savanna's most repeated stories: that elephants eat the fermented fruit on the ground and get drunk.
According to the brand's official website, the drink first existed as a marula spirit, launched in 1983 by the Southern Liqueur Company of South Africa. In 1989, the company added cream to the recipe, and Amarula cream liqueur reached South African shelves. The brand belonged to Distell, bought in 2023 by Heineken Beverages, which took Amarula with it.
The idea of drunken elephants is old. Travelers' accounts from around 1839 already recorded the Zulu belief that elephants warmed their heads with fermented fruit, said physiologist Steve Morris of the University of Bristol, in the UK. In 2006, he and colleagues David Humphreys and Dan Reynolds published a study in the journal *Physiological and Biochemical Zoology* that ran the numbers.
Assuming fermented fruit with 7% alcohol, an elephant would have to drink about 27 liters of marula juice to get drunk, the equivalent of more than 1,400 well-fermented fruits, and all at once, according to the summary released by the university. The researchers also noted that elephants prefer to pick the fruit off the tree, even pushing trees over to get it, when rotten fruit lies on the ground, and that food passes through their digestive system in 12 to 46 hours, too little time to ferment. The conclusion: a drunken elephant is highly unlikely.
In 2020, a University of Calgary study in Canada, published in *Biology Letters*, showed that African elephants carry a non-functional version of the ADH7 gene, linked to breaking down alcohol, according to Science News. For anthropologist Mareike Janiak, one of the authors, this may make it harder for them to metabolize ethanol, and the 2006 calculation, based on human physiology, may not apply to elephants. Ecologist Phyllis Lee, who has studied elephants in Kenya since 1982, told the magazine she has never seen a tipsy elephant.
Bebidário's catalog includes Amarula Cream and Amarula Ethiopian Coffee.
Sources: University of Bristol (January 3, 2006), Science News (May 1, 2020), Amarula (official website, October 26, 2026).
