• The urine of chimpanzees contains high levels of alcohol byproduct, most likely because the chimps regularly gorge themselves on fermented fruit, according to a new paper published in the journal Biology Letters. • It’s the latest evidence in support of a hotly debated theory regarding the evolutionary origins of human fondness for alcohol. • Aspreviously reported, in 2014, University of California, Berkeley (UCB) biologist Robert Dudley wrote a book calledThe Drunken Monkey: Why We Drink and Abuse Alcohol. • His controversial “drunken monkey hypothesis” proposed that the human attraction to alcohol goes back about 18 million years, to the origin of the great apes, and that social communication and sharing food evolved to better identify the presence of fruit from a distance. • At the time, skeptical scientists insisted that this was unlikely because chimpanzees and other primates just don’t eat fermented fruit or nectar. • But reports of primates doing just that have grown over the ensuing two decades.

Article Summaries:

  • New research published in Biology Letters shows that wild chimpanzees’ urine contains high levels of alcohol metabolites, providing biochemical evidence that these primates regularly consume fermented fruit. The findings support the “drunken monkey” hypothesis, which proposes that human attraction to alcohol dates back to the emergence of great apes about 18 million years ago. Earlier studies have documented chimpanzees eating fruit with measurable ethanol and estimated daily intake equivalent to one-two standard drinks. The current study, conducted by a University of California, Berkeley graduate student in Uganda, collected urine samples from Ngogo chimpanzees, confirming the metabolic processing of alcohol in these animals.
  • The urine of chimpanzees contains high levels of alcohol byproduct, most likely because the chimps regularly gorge themselves on fermented fruit, according to a new paper published in the journal Biology Letters. It’s the latest evidence in support of a hotly debated theory regarding the evolutionary origins of human fondness for alcohol. As previously reported, in 2014, University of California, Berkeley (UCB) biologist Robert Dudley wrote a book called The Drunken Monkey: Why We Drink and Abuse Alcohol. His controversial “drunken monkey hypothesis” proposed that the human attraction to alcoh

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