The Drunken Monkey Theory Seems to be a Real Thing
A new study by California State University reveals that humans may have inherited their love of alcohol from their ancient primate ancestors. Primatologist Christina Campbell studied the “Drunken Monkey Theory” before concluding that monkeys used the smell of alcohol to locate ripe and nutritious fruit. The monkeys somehow discovered that they would gain more calories from fermented fruit than unfermented fruit.
Christina says, “For the first time, we have been able to show, without a shadow of a doubt, that wild primates, with no human interference, consume fruit-containing ethanol. This is just one study, and more need to be done, but it looks like there may be some truth to that ‘drunken monkey’ hypothesis — that the proclivity of humans to consume alcohol stems from a deep-rooted affinity of frugivorous (fruit-eating) primates for naturally-occurring ethanol within ripe fruit.”
