Chimpanzees consume the equivalent of at least one alcoholic drink per day as they eat ripe, fermenting fruit, says a study out Wednesday that addresses one possible reason why humans are drawn to booze.<\/p>\n
The study, carried out in the wilds of Africa where the animals live, supports the theory that people may have inherited from primates a taste for alcohol and ability to metabolize it even though it is toxic for us.<\/p>\n
The researchers collected fruits that chimps eat and measured their ethanol content, which is produced as sugar ferments. They concluded that these evolutionary cousins of ours consume alcohol on a daily basis.<\/p>\n
And not just a little. Through the large amount of fruit that chimps eat, the researchers reckon the animals take in about 14 grams (half an ounce) of alcohol per day.<\/p>\n
Correcting for body size, it is like the chimps are drinking a pint of beer per day, Aleksey Maro, lead author of the study published in the journal Science Advances, told AFP.<\/p>\n
“It’s not an insubstantial amount of alcohol, but very diluted and more associated with food,” said the PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley.<\/p>\n
– The ‘drunken monkey’ theory –<\/p>\n
“We’ve seen for the first time that, indeed, our closest living relatives are consuming physiologically relevant doses of alcohol routinely daily,” Maro said.<\/p>\n
This is in line with the “drunken monkey theory” espoused more than a decade ago by US biologist Robert Dudley, who co-authored the new study.<\/p>\n
As the theory goes, humans liking alcohol and being able to metabolize it stems from our primate ancestors ingesting it daily through the fruit they eat.<\/p>\n
“The drunken monkey hypothesis is becoming more and more a reality,” said Maro. “Its name is unfortunate. A better name would be the evolutionary hangover.”<\/p>\n
The theory was initially met with skepticism among experts. But it has gained traction in recent years as studies showed that some primates eat fermented fruit and, given a choice of nectars with varying amounts of alcohol, they prefer the booziest one.<\/p>\n
Nathaniel Dominy, a professor of anthropology and evolutionary biology at Dartmouth College who did not take part in this study, welcomed it enthusiastically.<\/p>\n
“The paper is a tour de force,” he told AFP.<\/p>\n
Dominy also said it “puts to rest the debate over the prevalence\u00a0of ethanol\u00a0in tropical fruits.”<\/p>\n
But he added that the study raises new questions on the biological and behavioral consequences of chronic low-level ethanol exposure for nonhuman primates. <\/p>\n
Another unanswered question is whether chimps actively search out boozy fruit or just eat it when they find it. The researchers in this study said they did not know.<\/p>\n
The issue of chimps ingesting alcohol will remain under study to learn more about the origins of human alcohol consumption and assess its risks and possible benefits, according to Maro.<\/p>\n
“We can learn about ourselves through the chimpanzees,” he said.<\/p>\n
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