Why do some humans love booze? This study on monkeys might give answers

Why do some humans love alcohol? It's really difficult to comment on a person's likes and dislikes, especially when it comes to eating and drinking. But still, research and studies can help understand why exactly a person likes to eat/drink something more or crave it.

For example, alcohol. A new study on monkeys found that some of our 'ape ancestors' actively seek out fruit containing alcohol. The fruits become ripe enough for the sugars to have fermented, producing about two per cent alcohol.

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As published in Science Daily, monkeys have routinely consumed fruit containing alcohol, a phenomenon that might shed light on human's taste for booze.

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Biologists from the University of California - Berkeley analysed the ethanol content of fruit eaten by spider monkeys in Panama. They found that the fruit regularly contained alcohol, between 1 per cent and 2 per cent.

The biologists also collected urine samples of the monkeys and most of the samples contained secondary metabolites of ethanol. The result shows that the animals were actually utilising the alcohol for energy.

Primatologist Christina Campbell of California State University, Northridge (CSUN) led the study. Campbell's graduate student Victoria Weaver also helped as she collected fruit eaten and discarded by black-handed spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) in Panama.

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As per the study, the results provide further evidence that our primate ancestors preferentially sought out fermented, alcohol-containing fruit likely for its greater nutritional value.

The study also mentioned that "humans may have inherited this proclivity for ethanol" from our ancestors.

"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," said Campbell, a CUSN professor of anthropology who obtained her Ph.D. in anthropology from Berkeley in 2000.

The new study also supports the idea, which was given by UC Berkeley biologist Robert Dudley, who mentioned the "drunken monkey" hypothesis.

Dudley wrote a book in 2014 suggesting that our attraction to booze arose millions of years ago, when our ape and monkey ancestors discovered that the scent of alcohol led them to ripe, fermenting and nutritious fruit.

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