In the forests of Africa, wild chimpanzees are buzzing—unwittingly sipping the equivalent of two cocktails a day, according to new research. Scientists from UC Berkeley and other institutions spent three field seasons in Uganda and Cote d'Ivoire gathering and testing fruit regularly consumed by wild chimps to measure their alcohol content. Results showed that the naturally fermented fruits—primarily figs and small plum-like fruits—typically contain about 0.3% alcohol by weight, similar to kombucha. Since chimps consume around 10 pounds of fruit per day and weigh on average about 90 pounds, this adds up to roughly 14g of ethanol, or the equivalent of two human cocktails a day, per CBS News.
Even so, researchers say the chimps don't appear intoxicated. To actually get drunk, the animals would have to gorge on fruit far beyond their normal intake. As it stands, they experience only a subtle, ongoing buzz from naturally fermenting fruit, researchers say. UC Berkeley professor Robert Dudley, a co-author of the study published Wednesday in Science Advances, was first to propose the "drunken monkey" theory that the human affinity for alcohol may trace back to primate ancestors with fruit-heavy diets. This study offers more evidence of that, per the BBC. Several primates, as well as elephants, have been documented consuming naturally fermented fruit or nectar, though this is the first study to offer direct chemical measurements of ethanol in the fruits that wild chimps consume.
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