Do monkeys eat alcoholic fruit? It would seem so. If the hypothesis was already put forward more than 25 years ago by the biologist of the University of Berkeley, Robert Dudley, a new study comes to confirm these facts. This was conducted by primatologist Christina Campbell, from the University of Northridge in California, and one of her students, Victoria Weaver, reports EurekAlert. They collected fruit eaten by Panamanian spider monkeys and found that the alcohol concentration in the fruit was 1-2%.
In their research, the primatologists also studied the urine of these monkeys and found that they released secondary metabolites of alcohol. This tends to prove that monkeys use this alcohol as a source of energy. “For the first time, we were able to demonstrate […] that wild primates, without any human interference, consume fruits containing alcohol”, assures Christina Campbell.
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A hypothesis related to that of the “drunken monkey”
If the study is unique for the moment, and it will take others to confirm this hypothesis, it joins that of the “drunken monkey” which explains that the propensity of humans to consume alcohol is directly linked to the appetite of monkeys for overripe fruit. Robert Dudley had also highlighted evidence, he said, in his book The Drunken Monkey: Why we drink and abuse alcohol.
According to his research, some fruits contain up to 7% alcohol and are eaten by monkeys. But at the time, according to EurekAlerthe had no evidence that the monkeys were looking for its overripe fruit or that they were digesting the alcohol in it.
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How much fruit containing alcohol do monkeys consume?
For Robert Dudley, who got wind of this new study, it confirms what he thought, namely that there is alcohol in the food that monkeys eat but also that they metabolize the alcohol contained in it. . He adds: “What we don’t know is how much they eat and what the behavioral and physiological effects are.” However, he speaks of “confirmation”.
In addition, these fruits eaten in Panama by spider monkeys have been used for millennia by indigenous populations of Central America and theSouth America to make a fermented alcohol drink. On the other hand, unlike humans, this does not disinhibit them because “their intestines fill up before reaching a level of intoxication”, specifies the researcher.
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