A gag in “Piker’s Peak,” a Looney Tunes cartoon from 1957, plays off the trope of the Saint Bernard rescue dog carrying brandy to warm up an avalanche victim. After digging Yosemite Sam out of the snow, the dog opens the barrel in its collar to reveal a cocktail shaker and martini glass, and ignores the frozen Sam as it mixes itself a drink. There’s something charmingly funny about the image of an animal drinking alcohol; it seems so incongruously humanlike. Some documentaries that show wild animals getting drunk off…
