Chimps Drinking a Lager a Day in Ripe Fruit, Study Finds (bbc.com) 53
Wild chimpanzees have been found to consume the equivalent of a bottle of lager's alcohol a day from eating ripened fruit, scientists say. BBC: They say this is evidence humans may have got our taste for alcohol from common primate ancestors who relied on fermented fruit -- a source of sugar and alcohol -- for food. "Human attraction to alcohol probably arose from this dietary heritage of our common ancestor with chimpanzees," said study researcher Aleksey Maro of the University of California, Berkeley.
Chimps, like many other animals, have been spotted feeding on ripe fruit lying on the forest floor, but this is the first study to make clear how much alcohol they might be consuming. The research team measured the amount of ethanol, or pure alcohol, in fruits such as figs and plums eaten in large quantities by wild chimps in Cote d'Ivoire and Uganda. Based on the amount of fruit they normally eat, the chimps were ingesting around 14 grams of ethanol -- equivalent to nearly two UK units, or roughly one 330ml bottle of lager. The fruits most commonly eaten were those highest in alcohol content.
Chimps, like many other animals, have been spotted feeding on ripe fruit lying on the forest floor, but this is the first study to make clear how much alcohol they might be consuming. The research team measured the amount of ethanol, or pure alcohol, in fruits such as figs and plums eaten in large quantities by wild chimps in Cote d'Ivoire and Uganda. Based on the amount of fruit they normally eat, the chimps were ingesting around 14 grams of ethanol -- equivalent to nearly two UK units, or roughly one 330ml bottle of lager. The fruits most commonly eaten were those highest in alcohol content.
That's right (Score:4, Funny)
We should all be on the Lion Diet of all raw beef, butter and eggs, just like a lion eats. Joe Rogan told me so.
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Older white gentlemen are partial to bourbon and whiskey. Clearly they got that from their chimp forbearers aging their fermented fruit in the holes of dead trees. Women really like Shirley Temples, no doubt this came from female chimps hanging around the Shirley Temple trees waiting for the fermented fruit to fall. Good ol' boys like Budweiser; this stems from good ol' chimps clustering down by the water hole swapping tales of their pursuits while quaffing on fermented Budweiser mangoes. Thanks for showing
Re:That's right (Score:4, Interesting)
We should all be on the Lion Diet of all raw beef, butter and eggs, just like a lion eats. Joe Rogan told me so.
I don't know how seriously I should take this but I'll comment regardless.
As far as I know most any adult mammal loses their taste for any kind of milk or dairy upon becoming an adult. It's an anomaly among European humans to tolerate lactose into adulthood, an artifact of living in a cold European climate where long winters left adults without a source of vital vitamin D but the milk extracted from cattle. Those that had the gene for lactose tolerance as an adult tended to survive the winter to produce children with that same gene. As I recall this doesn't hold for regions where fishing was the norm as fish are high in vitamin D so this isn't universal among those with European ancestry, but rather common enough that if's considered odd for someone with light skin to not like eating cheese.
Eating eggs is also an artifact of domesticating animals for food. Do lions eat eggs? I know raccoons do, but they are vile creatures that did a lot of damage to my home. I cry when I see raccoon roadkill as I didn't have the chance to run them over. Eating eggs was also apparently vital for humans to survive the cold and cloudy north climates as eggs had vitamin D that would have come from being out in the sun for their distant cousins closer to the equator.
Light skin helped in getting more vitamin D but also meant a higher risk for sunburn. This is might be why much of the world as a brown skin, their ancestors got there by leaving sunny Africa, surviving traversing the cold and dimly lit Europe, then settling in places that might have eggs, butter, or fish, or maybe not. The skin color kind of averaged out.
I'm a fan of a relatively starch free diet. That means eating vegetables with some color to them than wheat, corn, potatoes, and rice that are basically white starch and little else. Because I crave calories by being a 6'5" dude I will often order a second side of fries with my Whopper meal if there's no side salad on the menu.
I remember hearing something about how many potatoes the typical Irish farmer ate in a day before the potato famine put an end to that. It was something like 40 potatoes. When working hard to harvest potatoes to keep a balance on calories in to out then maybe that's enough trace minerals and vitamins in a potato to keep going? I'm sure some milk and eggs helped balance out the diet. They didn't get much meat.
A healthy diet for most humans will have plenty of red meat and colorful vegetables, with some eggs, fish, or starchy vegetables to fill a hole in calories and vitamins.
Tolerance for alcohol helped in human development because fermented wine and beer meant the alcohol killed off bacteria while providing needed hydration and calories to a human population that largely consisted of subsistence farmers. Once humans discovered tea and coffee they started to boil water to kill off bacteria, with the needed calories made up with a habit of adding honey or sugar than alcohol. Didn't Joe Rogan cover this theory at some point?
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You're wrong about potatoes. They *are* high in starch, but they aren't "nearly all" starch, like corn or wheat.
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You're wrong about potatoes. They *are* high in starch, but they aren't "nearly all" starch, like corn or wheat.
I did put in "maybe" to cover my bases on potatoes.
The nutritional value of the common potato was a plot point in The Martian where Andy Weir did a lot of research into his story to make it believable and relatable. A diet of only potatoes would not be great but it should sustain a person for a long while.
I could go into Christian tradition of eating bread, wine, and fish but that might trigger some people. I'll merely suggest that is a sustainable diet so long as there's some olive oil, dates, and a few
Re:That's right (Score:4, Funny)
"Looking at what primates eat is likely more helpful."
Well, monkey see, monkey doo.
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If adult animals don't have a taste for milk why can I buy milk for cats or dog treats with cheese in?
Not all cats and dogs can tolerate dairy. We see lactose tolerance in cats and dogs because as domesticated animals they'd be eating our table scraps, and that means they'd get milk that's a couple days past the sell by date, bits of cheese here and there, buttered this and that, and so on. The lactose tolerant animals could get more calories from our table scraps and so would be more likely to hang around to produce more dogs and cats that were lactose tolerant. The cats and dogs that found our table sc
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Oh, and if there's milk made for cats then it is likely been treated to remove the lactose
It's because cats have (contrary to you assertion) a "taste for" milk and wish to drink it and owners may wish to indulge this taste (you contend they don't have) without causing them issues.
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You said "taste for" not whether or not they can tolerate it. They seem to have a taste for it.
Not all cats like milk.
https://justcatcafe.com/what-p... [justcatcafe.com]
Myth: All Cats Love Milk
While some cats might enjoy the taste of milk, itâ(TM)s not a universal preference. Many cats are simply not interested in it, and even those who enjoy it might experience digestive upset as a result.
The article I linked to above says 30% of cats will tolerate lactose as adults. The article also points out that cats will drink milk in spite of their intolerance because it is a learned behavior, they enjoy the taste and texture, and they are perhaps a bit too trusting of the humans that put food before them. The cats might not be able to correlate drinking milk to feeling sick from lactose intolerance later, their brains might not understand that
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Not all cats like milk.
True, but I've never yet in my life met one that didn't and have known several obsessive about it. Not everyone likes meat. But that doesn't mean that humans, in general, don't have a taste for it. So what is it you are trying to achieve with this statement?
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I grew up on a dairy farm and we would feed the cats milk regularly. They seemed to enjoy it. Had I known then what I know now I'd likely point out that milk might not be good for the adult cats.
My grandparents had a mixed farm including a milking herd. The cats also liked milk. Ditto, I wouldn't feed my cat cows milk with lactose in it. But then the previous cat got so obsessive about it, it would wake me at 4am for it. So milk feeding stopped soon after that. Hence, new cat is not getting milk as I don't want to go down that road again.
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As far as I know most any adult mammal loses their taste for any kind of milk or dairy upon becoming an adult. It's an anomaly among European humans to tolerate lactose into adulthood, an artifact of living in a cold European climate where long winters left adults without a source of vital vitamin D but the milk extracted from cattle.
Kiiinda but more likely it was also a good source of calories. Cows can eat stored, human inedible food such as hay and make useful calories (for humans) out of it. Plus cheese
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Hey, times are hard for chimps. (Score:5, Insightful)
They've got global warming, COVID, Trump, and all sorts of things to be terrified about besides the usual predation, poachers, and leopards.
Maybe leave them the fuck alone on this one.
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but too much booze just makes them monkey around all day.
Dumb correlation (Score:5, Interesting)
Fruit has been around for millions of years, "other animals" have been around for millions of years: Therefore, getting drunk has been around for millions of years. It is ridiculous to link our drug-use to a recent ancestor (via a genetic cousin). Getting drunk is not a apes-only activity. I've smelt rotting/alcoholic fruit and seen a flock of drunk parrots. (Also, human-made sugar-water ferments, causing drunk horses.)
Maybe, this is what scientists mean when they say we evolved to consume mind-altering drugs: Most cultures have them.
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My dog got drunk eating fermented crabapples. After a couple of incidents, we learned to not let him outside alone at that time of year.
health (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd like to know if chimps suffer from similar health issues as humans... Do they get diabetes from the high sugar consumption? Do they get hardening of arteries and liver failure from alcohol consumption?
Re:health (Score:4, Interesting)
The diet of orangutans is 65% fruit ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ), so if eating fruit easily gave diabetes, diabetes in orangoutans (and other primates) would be commonplace and it does not seem to be. A survey of captive orangutans finds that 25% are obese and 2% have diabetes. https://nagonline.net/wp-conte... [nagonline.net] , while an estimate 14% in adult humans currently live with diabetes (https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes )
As high-fiber diets are important for diabetes management ( https://journals.plos.org/plos... [plos.org] ), here is some advice for orangutans:
dietary fiber levels for captive orangutans may need to be increased. This can be accomplished in several ways:
1) offer all fruits raw and unpeeled; fiber is often localized in the peels;
2) replace soft fruits (bananas, grapes, citrus fruits), which contain low fiber levels, with hard fruits and vegetables, such as apples, pears, yams, potatoes, squash, or cucumbers, which contain relatively more fiber (carrots are not as fibrous);
3) increase green produce in the diet, and/or add browse daily; and 4) use high-fiber, commercial-primate biscuits.
In humans as well, literature says consumption of whole fruit (and not sugary syrups) protects from type 2 diabetes. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.co... [wiley.com]
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While some fruit (bananas in particular) are bad for diabetics, a lot are good for us - including apricots, raspberries, etc.
The main cause of diabetes is not fruit. Almost every meal in the entire world includes large portions of:
Wheat (including bread, muffins, pancakes, pasta, etc.)
Rice
Potatoes
Corn
Even knowing about diabetes, it can be hard to find a restaurant that does not include one of these in every single meal they serve. Yeah, whole grain versions are better - as in 10%. That's not enough.
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how sure are we of all this?
In particular, have the studies backing your statements controlled for toxic substances such glyphosate sprayed onto the plants and into the soil? Have they compared people who ate organic vs those that do not? Have they controlled for GMO vs non GMO? Modern grains vs ancient grains? rich soils vs depleted soils? artificial fertilizer vs compost?
Consider that humans have been eating wheat, corn, rice and other grains for millenia as staples. Now all of a sudden the
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It's a combination of excessive consumption (sure we've eaten these foods for thousands of years, but not in the same quantities), heavy processing, and artificial ingredients used as replacements for things either because they're cheaper or because the original ingredient is being blamed for obesity/diabetes.
For example, a recent study shows that artificial sweeteners are more dangerous than sugar:
https://www.oncologyrepublic.c... [oncologyrepublic.com.au]
Multiple governments have been pushing hard to reduce sugar, which resulted i
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The one thing I left out is portion size. Although I did mention 3x the amount we needed. Was not relevant to what I was saying, but it helps a lot.
Mediterranean diets are anti-diabetic because:
1) They emphasize whole grains - which does help. A 10% decrease is still worth it.
2) They emphasize unprocessed foods so they keep the fiber and avoid the added sugar.
3) They are HUGE on vegetables, which significantly reduces the amount of grains you eat. Of course, it is a problem for super-tasters that find v
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Not at all. No lifestyle diseases or metabolic syndromes for wild animals living in the jungle.
Getting killed or eaten by other animals has a sort of protective effect
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More evidence (Score:4, Funny)
Folly of controlled substances (Re:More evidence) (Score:3, Interesting)
Society as we know it could not have developed without alcohol.
I agree.
I'd add tobacco/nicotine, coffee/tea/caffeine, and opium/laudanum/etc. to that. Nicotine and caffeine were vital stimulants to get people going in the morning, then opiates and alcohol to calm down and relieve some of the pain of the day before going to sleep.
Marijuana likely plays an important role in the development of human civilization, I'm merely not as aware of the role it played. Then consider so many other substances that had some kind of religious or societal role to play. We've removed
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It's settled. I am voting for you :)
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What the future may hold (Score:2)
I'm into that drug from Robot Cop 2.
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Yup, alcohol both the cause of and solution to all life's problems
Yep, alcohol is recursive.
"To iterate is human, to recurse, divine."
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Speaking as a primate myself (Score:2)
Not everyone likes alchohol (Score:2)
To me it's really awful and ruins any drink. My bodies natural reaction is to spit it out. Perhaps my ancestors were choosier about their fruit.
I bet that's just what they say. (Score:2)
I don't have a problem with alcohol, I'm just a shocial drinkerr; no it's OK, I'll get up off the floor in a minute ,,,
Alcohol is not a primate specific want. (Score:2)
Back on the farm, there was a cow lot downhill from the silage / haylage bags. When freshly packed, those bags have runoff that's high-test alcohol. That alcohol would run into the puddles at the bottom of the hill, and the cattle in those lots would drink the SHIT out of it, and stumble around like a bunch of drunken buffoons. But they'd do it day after day after day. It may be mammal specific, but the desire for alcohol is definitely NOT primate specific.
BTW, the tamer cows, the ones that liked to interac
But... (Score:1)
Or are they bad drunks, who see the bad in everyone they come into contact with, and would be barred from the jungle if only there was a gorilla on the door ?
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Re: But... (Score:2)
Um, actually, it would be ale, not lager (Score:4, Informative)
The fruit is fermenting at ambient temperature. A lager ferments at around 10C, which is not typical of chimp habitat.
Drunken Monkey Kung Fu! (Score:2)
Bungle in the Jungle (Score:2)
Scoff at the monkeys who live in their dark tents
Down by the waterhole, drunk every Friday
Eating their nuts, saving their raisins for Sunday" -- Jethro Tull