Cheers! So alcohol drinking is not just human (anthropogenic)? I believe, other animals were also previously observed having a drink with their meals.
It appears, the researchers forgot to investigate whether there also heavy drinkers among chimpanzees.
Do females drink as much as males? One of the articles below suggests they do. 😊
"People who have a beer or a glass of wine with dinner aren’t the only primates downing a drink a day. New research finds chimps consume about 1.4 standard drinks’ worth of ethanol daily in the fruit they eat.
Researchers collected the ripe pulp from fruits that chimpanzees eat regularly in Côte d’Ivoire and Uganda, and tested their ethanol levels. When the team tallied up the amount of fruit eaten, they calculated that the animals consume an average of 14 grams of ethanol a day. ...
Intriguingly, the team found no notable difference in the amount of alcohol in fruits commonly eaten from trees and those that the chimps usually snag from the ground—a behavior researchers earlier this year dubbed “scrumping.” That means “naturally occurring dietary alcohol is inseparable from food,” ... which may help explain why our species is so fond of the stuff. “During periods of food scarcity, a physiological tolerance for dietary ethanol could have been crucial for survival, leading towards a fondness for ethanol that persists to this day,” ..."
"The first-ever measurements of the ethanol content of fruits available to chimpanzees in their native African habitat show that the animals could easily consume the equivalent of more than two standard alcoholic drinks each day, according to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.
It’s not clear whether they actively seek out fruit with high ethanol levels, which are typically riper fruit with more sugars to ferment. But the availability of ethanol in many species of fruit that they normally eat suggests that alcohol is a regular part of their diet and likely was a part of the diets of our human ancestors.
“Across all sites, male and female chimpanzees are consuming about 14 grams of pure ethanol per day in their diet, which is the equivalent to one standard American drink,” ... "
From the abstract:
"Human attraction to alcohol may derive from an evolutionary association between ethanol and fruits consumed by animals in nature.
Fermentative yeasts are widespread in the terrestrial biosphere, and simple carbohydrates underpinning ethanol production are commonplace within fruits.
We determined ethanol concentrations within fruits representing a substantial portion of the diet of our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees.
Ripe fruit pulp from 20 angiosperm species in Côte d’Ivoire and Uganda contained an average value of 0.31 (± 0.21 SD) and 0.32% (± 0.20) ethanol (weight/weight), respectively, as scaled by annual chimpanzee feeding time per species at each site. Chimpanzees typically eat ~4.5 kilograms of fruit per day, corresponding to an estimated ethanol ingestion of 14 grams (±9), or the equivalent of 1.4 (±0.9) standard drinks by international standards. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that ethanol is widespread within tropical fruits and that modern predisposition to alcohol consumption derives from ancestral exposure to this psychoactive substance among frugivorous primates."
In the wild, chimps likely ingest the equivalent of several alcoholic drinks every day (original news release) "A survey of the alcohol content of fruits eaten regularly by African chimps shows that their diet could deliver 14 grams of ethanol daily. Given their body size, that's nearly two cocktails' worth."
Ethanol ingestion via frugivory in wild chimpanzees (open access)
Does this chimp look drunk too you? 😊
No comments:
Post a Comment