{"id":16382,"date":"2022-05-04T06:23:22","date_gmt":"2022-05-04T04:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/?p=61168"},"modified":"2022-05-04T06:53:08","modified_gmt":"2022-05-04T04:53:08","slug":"do-monkeys-get-drunk-scientists-find-out-the-truth","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/rss_feed\/do-monkeys-get-drunk-scientists-find-out-the-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Do monkeys get drunk? Scientists find out the truth."},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Stuart Blackman\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Wednesday, 04 May 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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New research shows that spider monkeys routinely consume fermenting fruit, backing up the notion that humans inherited our proclivity for alcohol from our primate ancestors \u2013 the so-called \u201cdrunken monkey hypothesis.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s well known that certain non-human primates enjoy a drop of the hard stuff. Chimpanzees are known to raid stocks of palm wine brewed by villagers and feral vervet monkeys in the Caribbean are famous for stealing alcoholic drinks from bars.<\/p>\n\nThe new study, though, published in <a href=\"\/\/royalsocietypublishing.org\/doi\/10.1098\/rsos.211729"\" target=\""_blank"\" rel=\""noopener" noopener noreferrer\">Royal Society Open Science<\/a>,<\/em> is the first to demonstrate that wild primates \u2013 black-handed spider monkeys in Panama \u2013\u00a0 enjoy a tipple as a part of their natural diet, in the form of fermenting mango-like fruits of the jobo tree.<\/p>\nThe monkeys\u2019 attraction to alcohol is not for mere amusement. The presence of breakdown products of alcohol in their urine demonstrates that they are gaining a calorific benefit from imbibing it.<\/p>\n<a href=\"\/\/www.csun.edu\/social-behavioral-sciences\/anthropology\/christina-campbell"\" target=\""_blank"\" rel=\""noopener" noopener noreferrer\">Christina Campbell of California State University<\/a>, who led the work, says it\u2019s not yet known how much alcohol the monkeys are consuming, although it was found to be present in the fruits at concentrations of one to two per cent \u2013 comparable to a lager shandy. \u201cWe know it\u2019s not enough to make them drunk on a regular basis,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\u201cIn fifteen months, I only saw them get drunk twice. That was towards the end of the fruiting season, when you can smell the alcohol as you enter the forest. They were vomiting and falling out of trees.<\/p>\n\u201cThings that may be beneficial in small amounts can be really bad for you in high quantities,\u201d she adds. \u201cEthanol is similar to sugar and fat in that respect. It becomes a problem when there\u2019s an excess of it.\u201d<\/p>\nCampbell is concerned that, in their increasingly fragmented habitat, the monkeys may be unable to avoid the fruit when the alcohol content becomes too high. \u201cThey don\u2019t have the digestive system to survive on leaves. So if other fruits aren\u2019t available in their forest fragment, they may have no choice.\u201d<\/p>\nMain image: Black-handed spider monkey \u00a9 Kryssia Campos\/Getty\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/body><\/html>\n<hr class=\"no-tts wp-block-separator\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Stuart Blackman Published: Wednesday, 04 May 2022 at 12:00 am New research shows that spider monkeys routinely consume fermenting fruit, backing up the notion that humans inherited our proclivity for alcohol from our primate ancestors \u2013 the so-called \u201cdrunken monkey hypothesis.\u201d It\u2019s well known that certain non-human primates enjoy a drop of the hard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":16383,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"2"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2022\/05\/do-monkeys-get-drunk-scientists-find-out-the-truth.jpg",531,324,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2022\/05\/do-monkeys-get-drunk-scientists-find-out-the-truth-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2022\/05\/do-monkeys-get-drunk-scientists-find-out-the-truth-300x183.jpg",300,183,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2022\/05\/do-monkeys-get-drunk-scientists-find-out-the-truth.jpg",531,324,false],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2022\/05\/do-monkeys-get-drunk-scientists-find-out-the-truth.jpg",531,324,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2022\/05\/do-monkeys-get-drunk-scientists-find-out-the-truth.jpg",531,324,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2022\/05\/do-monkeys-get-drunk-scientists-find-out-the-truth.jpg",531,324,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Stuart Blackman Published: Wednesday, 04 May 2022 at 12:00 am New research shows that spider monkeys routinely consume fermenting fruit, backing up the notion that humans inherited our proclivity for alcohol from our primate ancestors \u2013 the so-called \u201cdrunken monkey hypothesis.\u201d It\u2019s well known that certain non-human primates enjoy a drop of the hard…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/16382"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}