A news study shows that while elephants like the taste of booze, they are not actually getting drunk when eating marula fruit.

The findings, published in the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology,Reuters

"... Intoxication would minimally require that the elephant avoids drinking water, consumes a diet of only marula fruit at a rate of at least 400 percent normal maximum food intake, and with a mean alcohol content of at least 3 percent," write the authors.

The authors say that the large mammals like the taste of alcohol from the marula fruit, which ferments to an ethanol content of about 3 percent after three or four days.

"Elephants indisputably like booze, especially Asian elephants where we have many reports of them getting into rice-wine stores and drinking the stuff," lead author Steve Morris tells Reuters by phone from his UK office.

Marula is the key ingredient in a popular South African cream liqueur.