Alcohol \u2014 and animals who love to consume it \u2014 is far more common in the natural world than scientists once believed, a new study has found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because ethanol \u2014 the kind of alcohol that forms from fruit and grain sugars \u2014 is present in virtually every environment, most fruit-eating and nectar-sipping animals likely consume it, according to findings<\/u><\/a> published on Wednesday in Trends in Ecology & Evolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That revelation has researchers retreating from the human-centric view that \u201cethanol is just something that humans use,\u201d University of Exeter behavioral ecologist and senior author Kimberley Hockings said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ethanol, Hockings noted, has a very long history. Flower and fruit-bearing plants and vines first rose in the late Cretaceous, about 100 million years ago, making them roughly contemporaneous with Tyrannosaurus rex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As fallen fruit ages, yeasts in the air and the surface of the fruit itself convert sugar into ethanol \u2014 one reason why rotting fruit can smell a bit like beer or wine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These fruits don\u2019t generally reach a high-proof \u2014 generally 1 to 2 percent alcohol by volume (ABV), or somewhere between kombucha and \u201cthree-two\u201d beers<\/u><\/a> \u2014 although scientists have found that some rotting palm fruit in Panama exceeds 10 percent ABV, putting it in the same neighborhood as wine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But for a bird or small mammal gorging on slightly-alcoholic fruit, even one to two percent can be enough to catch a potentially lethal buzz. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is not advantageous to be inebriated as you\u2019re climbing around in the trees or surrounded by predators at night\u2014that\u2019s a recipe for not having your genes passed on,\u201d cauthor and College of Central Florida professor of molecular ecology Matthew Carrigan said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Animals who eat ethanol \u2014 which include our own primate ancestors, who diverged from other mammals about 15 million years after the rise of fruit-bearing plants \u2014 have the opposite problem of modern humans when it comes to alcohol, Carrigan added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unlike \u201chumans who want to get intoxicated but don\u2019t really want the calories\u2014from the non-human perspective, the animals want the calories but not the inebriation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As such, animals that eat this fruit often have genes that help them break down ethanol without getting drunk \u2014 which allows them to take advantage of the distinctive sickly sweet smell to find fruit without the risk of a predator slapping them with an EWI (Eaten While Intoxicated).<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the idea that animals avoid getting drunk is a hypothesis, not a well-founded conclusion; the researchers emphasized that they don\u2019t know if animals seek out intoxication. One of the past decade\u2019s biggest megatrends in ecology and biology is the growing consensus that sentience \u2014 and intelligence \u2014 are far more common than had been believed<\/u><\/a>. And social drinking could be advantageous for sentient communities: Among our branch of the primates, anthropologists believe that social drinking helped facilitate \u2014 or even cause \u2014 the formation of the first cities<\/u><\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For social animals like birds and some mammals, the researchers noted, there may be boozy benefits that help outweigh the consequences of getting drunk \u2014 a conjecture which first requires finding out if intoxication in animals looks like it does in humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alongside the paper, researchers published photos of primates like Capichin monkeys, spider monkeys and even chimpanzees eating alcoholic fruit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This could potential offer advantages, University of Exeter behavioral ecologist and first author Anna Bowland said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOn the cognitive side, ideas have been put forward that ethanol can trigger the endorphin and dopamine system, which leads to feelings of relaxation that could have benefits in terms of sociality,\u201d Bowland said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But \u201cto test that, we\u2019d really need to know if ethanol is producing a physiological response in the wild.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n