You’ve probably seen the viral clips. A squirrel stumbling across a porch after eating fermented pumpkins or a jaguar gnawing on Banisteriopsis caapi roots in the Amazon. It’s funny, right? Well, sort of. But if you're actually looking for where to watch animals on drugs, you’ll find that the reality is a messy mix of accidental poisonings, intentional evolution, and some pretty heavy-duty scientific research. It isn’t just about YouTube memes. It’s about how biology interacts with chemistry in the wild.
Nature isn't a drug-free zone.
Honestly, animals seek out altered states way more often than we think. Scientists like Giorgio Samorini have dedicated entire careers to documenting this. His book, Animals and Psychedelics, is basically the Bible for this stuff. He argues that the desire to get "high" is a universal biological drive, right up there with hunger and sex. If you want to see this in action, you have to know where to look, because Netflix isn't exactly hosting a "Nature's Junkies" category.
The Best Documentaries and Series to See Animals on Drugs
If you want high-quality footage—pun intended—standard nature docs are your best bet. They don’t always frame it as "drugs," though. They call it "unusual feeding behavior" or "chemical defense mechanisms."
One of the most famous examples appears in the BBC’s Spy in the Wild. Using "spy cameras" disguised as animals, the crew captured young dolphins passing around a pufferfish. Pufferfish carry tetrodotoxin. In high doses, it kills you. In tiny doses? It apparently makes dolphins go into a trance-like state. You can watch them floating near the surface, seemingly fascinated by their own reflections. It’s one of the few pieces of footage that looks like a genuine "puff-puff-pass" circle in the ocean.
Then there’s the classic Nature’s Weirdest Events (also BBC). They’ve done segments on "drunk" elk in Sweden. These 1,000-pound beasts get absolutely hammered on fermented apples in the fall. They get stuck in trees. They lose fights with lawn furniture. It sounds like a joke, but local police actually have to deal with them like they’re rowdy pub-crawlers.
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Where to Find Specific Species "Using"
- The Lemurs of Madagascar: You can find clips of Black Lemurs biting into toxic millipedes. The millipedes secrete cyanide as a defense. The lemurs aren't trying to eat them; they rub the toxins on their fur to repel insects. But the side effect? They start salivating, their eyes glaze over, and they enter a state of total euphoria. National Geographic’s Animals Gone Wild has covered this.
- The Jaguars of the Amazon: Documentaries focusing on the deep rainforest often show jaguars seeking out the "Ayahuasca" vine. While humans brew it into a potent psychedelic tea, jaguars eat the root directly. Local indigenous groups have observed this for centuries, claiming it "cleanses" the cat’s system and enhances their sensory perception for hunting.
- Reindeer in Siberia: This is a wild one. Reindeer love Amanita muscaria mushrooms (the red ones with white spots). These fungi are hallucinogenic. Ethnobotanists like Andy Letcher have noted that reindeer will specifically seek these out, even navigating through deep snow to find them. The funniest (and grossest) part? The active compounds pass through their urine. Other reindeer—and historically, human shamans—would drink the urine to get the same effect without the toxic side effects of the raw mushroom.
Why Do We Even Care Where to Watch This?
It’s not just about the "lulz."
Understanding where to watch animals on drugs helps researchers understand addiction in humans. It’s a field called pharmacognosy. If a bighorn sheep is willing to risk falling off a literal cliff just to scrape a specific psychoactive lichen off a rock, that tells us something about how the brain’s reward system works.
Ronald K. Siegel, a psychopharmacologist at UCLA, spent decades studying this. He found that intoxication is a natural part of the animal kingdom. It's not a "human" mistake. It’s a biological constant.
But let’s be real for a second. A lot of what you see on social media under the "animals on drugs" tag is actually heartbreaking. Take the "drunk" elephants in India. Often, these stories involve elephants breaking into villages, drinking homemade rice beer (maad), and then trampling homes in a confused panic. It’s less Dumbo and more a tragic consequence of habitat loss and human-wildlife conflict. When you watch these clips, look for the context. Are they in the wild, or are they scavengers in a human-dominated world?
How to Find Reliable Footage Without the Clickbait
If you’re searching YouTube or TikTok, use specific terms. Don't just type "animals on drugs." You’ll get a lot of AI-generated junk or cruel "prank" videos that you definitely shouldn't support.
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Instead, search for:
- "Zoopharmacognosy examples" – This is the scientific term for animals self-medicating.
- "Fermented fruit animal behavior" – This is how you find the classic drunk monkeys/elephants/birds.
- "Interspecies chemical interaction" – This gets you the dolphin/pufferfish type of content.
Scientific journals like Journal of Ethnopharmacology sometimes have supplemental video files. They aren't edited for entertainment, but they are the most "real" look you'll ever get.
The Ethics of Watching
There’s a dark side to this. Some "viral" videos of animals acting weird are actually videos of animals with neurological diseases like Rabies or Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). A "zombie" deer isn't high; it's dying. It’s important to distinguish between a caterpillar eating a coca leaf and a raccoon that’s been poisoned by pesticides.
If the animal looks like it's in pain, it's not a "drug" video.
Also, avoid any content where humans are intentionally giving substances to animals. That’s animal cruelty, plain and simple. Nature provides its own pharmacy; we don't need to interfere. The best where to watch animals on drugs experiences are the ones where the camera is a silent observer of a natural, albeit strange, phenomenon.
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Where to Go From Here
If you want to dive deeper into the world of natural animal highs, start with the experts. Forget the 30-second TikToks.
Read The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan—he touches on how plants use animals (including us) to spread their seeds by offering chemical rewards. Check out the work of Dr. Jane Goodall; she’s documented plenty of "odd" behaviors in primates that border on ritualistic or sensory-seeking.
Actionable Next Steps:
- Watch: Spy in the Wild (Season 1, Episode 4) for the dolphin pufferfish footage.
- Search: "Wallabies in Tasmanian poppy fields." Australia produces a massive amount of the world's legal opium, and the local wallabies are known to break into the fields, get high, and hop in literal circles until they pass out.
- Read: Animals and Psychedelics by Giorgio Samorini for a factual, non-sensationalist look at the history of this behavior.
- Avoid: Any video where an animal is in a domestic setting (a house or cage) acting "high." These are almost always cases of accidental poisoning (like a dog eating a weed edible) and are medical emergencies, not entertainment.
Nature is weirder than any fiction we could write. Seeing a bird get tipsy on berries might be funny, but it’s also a window into the complex, chemical-driven world we all live in. Just keep it ethical, stay skeptical of "viral" clips, and stick to the documentaries that treat the subject with the scientific curiosity it deserves.