The study, led by Aleksey Maro (UC Berkeley) and colleagues, shows that chimpanzees may consume the equivalent of two glasses of wine per day through their natural diet of ripe and partially fermented fruits. These results lend support to the “drunken monkey hypothesis”, which suggests that humans’ attraction to alcohol has evolutionary roots in primate diets.

In New Scientist, Miquel Llorente (co-PI Comparative Minds Research Group, University of Girona), who was not involved in the research, was invited to comment on the study. He noted that the findings “add weight to the idea that alcohol exposure has deep evolutionary roots in primate diets and may have influenced human evolution.” However, he also highlighted an important difference: “Unlike in humans, ethanol ingestion in apes is incidental, not voluntary, which makes the leap from natural exposure to the challenges of addiction in our species a big one.”

🔗 Read our commentary in New Scientist: Wild chimpanzees may get mildly intoxicated from alcoholic fruit

📖 Original study reference: Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adw1665)