Wild chimpanzees consume 2 cocktails’ worth of alcohol a day by feasting on boozy fruit: study

Monkey see, monkey booze.

Wild chimpanzees in the forests of Uganda and Côte d’Ivoire consume roughly two boozy beverages’ worth of overripe, fermented fruit a day, according to a new study.

Chimps glug down 14 grams of ethanol in the roughly 10 pounds of fruit they feast on per day, adding up to an equivalent of two alcoholic drinks for a human, according to the paper published Wednesday in Science Advances by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

Biologists discovered the apparent jungle juice by testing the alcohol content of fruit that chimps eat in the lush canopies and grounds of Kibale National Park in Uganda and Taï National Park in the Ivory Coast.

“Across all sites, male and female chimpanzees are consuming about 14 grams of pure ethanol per day in their diet, which is the equivalent to one standard American drink,” UC Berkeley graduate student Aleksey Maro of the Department of Integrative Biology told Berkeley News.

“When you adjust for body mass, because chimps weigh about 40 kilos versus a typical human at 70 kilos, it goes up to nearly two drinks,” Maro said.

It is not clear exactly why the chimps seek out the particularly intoxicating fruits, which are typically riper and contain more sugars to ferment.

But the findings suggest that alcohol is a regular part of chimps’ diets — and likely our ancestors, too.

“The chimps are eating 5 to 10% of their body weight a day in ripe fruit, so even low concentrations yield a high daily total, a substantial dosage of alcohol,” UC Berkeley Professor Robert Dudley told the outlet.

Dudley believes chimps have a hankering for the hard stuff due to his “drunken monkey” hypothesis, which argues that humans’ alcohol-drinking habits have roots in our primate ancestor’s penchant for energy-rich, fermented fruit.

Though the chimps are consuming an impressive amount of alcohol, they do not feel a buzz, researchers added.

The apes would have to consume enough fruit to be bloated to feel intoxicated.

“Chimpanzees consume a similar amount of alcohol to what we might if we ate fermented food daily,” Maro said.

“Human attraction to alcohol probably arose from this dietary heritage of our common ancestor with chimpanzees.”