About

Drunk Elephants references a viral image of two elephants asleep in a tea garden after breaking into a village in China and drinking too much corn wine in March 2020. Though some reports concentrated on a seemingly wholesome picture of sleeping elephants, the elephants wreaked havoc on the village destroying homes and crops and some say the picture may be unrelated to the story.

Origin

On March 16, 2020, Ishuocha^[1] reported that on March 11th, in Ouhai district of Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China, elephants broke into a small village and drank a total of 30 kg of villagers' bagu wine, and fell asleep, drunk in a tea garden. That day, Twitter user @EPliang^[2] shared a the story and the image of the two elephants (shown below).

Spread

On March 17th, Twitter user @thepapercn^[4] tweeted a Chinese news story with the caption, "Local authorities in Menghai County, Yunnan deny rumors that a herd of #elephants drank 30kg liquor and passed out in a tea garden. The fact is that elephants went downhill and intruded into villagers’ homes, causing damages" (shown below). The video gained over 3,500 views in three days.

The next day, Twitter user @Spilling_The_T,^[5] tweeted two images of the incident with the caption, "While humans carry out social distancing, a group of 14 elephants broke into a village in Yunan province, looking for corn and other food. They ended up drinking 30kg of corn wine and got so drunk that they fell asleep in a nearby tea garden. 😂" (shown below, left). The tweet received over 954,700 likes and 248,100 retweets in two days. The next day, Twitter user @ladyhaja^[6] tweeted, "I’m afraid the drunk elephants story is almost certainly fake. Some elephants did rock up in a village but the “drunk” pics circulated on WeChat & are unrelated. However, I stumbled across this old piece, & this sentence has made up for my disappointment" and linked to a National Geographic^[3] article about drunken elephants (shown below, right). The tweet garnered over 300 likes in a day.

That same day, Redditor ADarkcid posted the set of images to r/interestingasfuck^[7] with the caption, "While humans carry out social distancing, a group of 14 elephants broke into a village in Yunan province, looking for corn and other food. They ended up drinking 30kg of corn wine and got so drunk that they fell asleep in a nearby tea garden" (shown below). The post garnered over 114,000 points (93% upvoted) in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References