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<\/a>, 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 “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<\/a>” 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<\/a> and, given a choice of nectars with varying amounts of alcohol<\/a>, 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 of ethanol in 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![\"YouTube](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758196628_340_0.jpg\")
frameborder=”0\u2033 allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen>The ‘drunken monkey’ theory<\/p>\n