There is little scientific evidence that animals actually feast on the natural alcohol found in vibrant fruits, but a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows that there are some creatures deep in the rainforests of Malaysia who enjoy drinking spirits.
By Cynthia Graver
There are many stories about animals that do not sweat a drop of bile. In 2004, Reuters reported on a black bear that passed out at a resort in Washington state after drinking too much beer. In October 2007, the Associated Press reported on six Indian elephants that went on a rampage, uprooted a power pole and electrocuted themselves after drinking homemade liquor made from rice. Even Charles Darwin wrote in "The Descent of Man" that monkeys have a "strong attraction to alcoholic beverages" and beer.
However, there is little scientific evidence proving that animals do celebrate by drinking natural alcohol found in vibrant fruits. On the contrary: it seemed that animals were not interested in it and even hesitated. But a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows that there are some creatures deep in the rainforests of Malaysia that enjoy drinking liquor.
In the mid-90s, animal physiologists Frank Wiens and Annette Zistmann from the University of Bayreuth in Germany noticed a tiny woodpecker regularly visiting between the paws of Bertam palms and sipping the nectar the trees secrete. Vince also noticed a strange fermentation smell emanating from these plants, and something that looked like foam from a mug of beer.
"It raised my suspicions that alcohol was involved," he recalled. Vince tested the nectar and found that it contained 3.8% alcohol, similar to some types of beer. The flower buds of the Bartham palm seem to host a previously unknown type of yeast that acts as a brewer and ferments the nectar.
And this botanical bartender knows how to satisfy his customers: seven species of mammals of the rainforest in western Malaysia, including the woodpecker and the slow loris, drink alcohol every evening, and sometimes even come back for a drink on Mondays and Tuesdays. In human terms, they drink the equivalent of nine alcoholic drinks a night. Vince says both sides benefit: the animals enjoy a drink and the plants enjoy the pollen.
But the little furry drinkers don't get fuzzy and they don't exhibit overt drunken behavior. They don't trip, stagger or faint. Vince speculates that the alcoholic nectar still has some sort of neurological effect that makes you want to go back for another round of the drink. He says there is an evolutionary logic to this: the animals get food and the plant binds its pollinators to it.
Biologist Robert Dudley of the University of California at Berkeley says the study demonstrates for the first time his hypothesis that our attraction to alcohol stems from the days when our ancestors roamed the forests in search of energy-rich plants. The aroma of alcohol may have hinted that the fruit has reached its peak nutritional value. But like many evolutionary adaptations that were beneficial in the past, Dudley says, our fondness for tart fruit has led to an unhealthy addiction to alcohol in today's world of abundance. The tree sparrows thus serve as a living model for our extinct common ancestors.
Although primates in captivity like to drink ethanol produced by humans, the subject has been largely unstudied in the past. "This is a very fruitful area for future research," says Dudley. But in the few studies that were conducted, the animals showed no interest in natural alcohol. Anthropologist Kathryn Milton of the University of California at Berkeley approached primate researchers, who work with 22 species, but none of them had encountered eating fermented fruit. Scientists from Ben Gurion University of the Negev who studied bats reported that the animals avoided foods that contained high percentages of alcohol, despite their high sugar concentrations. Perhaps the reason for this, says Barry Pinshaw, an animal physiologist who participated in the study, is that "a drunk bat is a dead bat."
And what about the common stories of carved elephants eating vibrant marula fruits in the Kruger National Park in South Africa? never happened and never existed. The physiologist Steve Morris from the University of Bristol in England calculated based on the size of the elephants, the metabolism in their bodies and the alcohol content of the lively marula fruit, and found that for an average elephant to get drunk, he needs to eat at least 700 fruits.
But the lightweight woodpeckers prove that there are animals that enjoy a nightly cocktail.
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Mistake!
What you wrote is that they don't like to get drunk before they know the intoxicating drink and then they do like it.
Guess what? Just like humans!
Mistake !
Animals don't "like to get drunk"!
Elephants that enter villages and drink alcohol and all the other examples,
demonstrate the animals' "love" for nectar or any other composition of sugars,
"Love" the drink, not "love" getting drunk!
At a later stage, due to addiction, it is possible to search for alcohol,
The initial search is for the drink or the food,
Only people "like" to get drunk,
Therefore again, there is no "evolutionary justification" for alcohol addiction!
As mentioned here - animals actually like to get drunk.
This is not revealed in the research itself but in the surrounding stories.
Certain animals like alcoholic drinks made by humans and the only reason why they don't get drunk in nature is that they don't know how to make such drinks themselves.
It also reveals one of the reasons why humans get drunk: unlike animals - they actually know how to make intoxicating drinks.
The reason humans enjoy alcohol is not social.
This is a by-product of the structure and function of the brain (ours and that of other animals) that has not gone through any process of natural selection that could have sifted it because the factor that activates it does not exist in the animals' natural environment.
There is a chance that over the years evolution will act on this issue as well and leave only people who are not addicted to alcohol and people who do not suffer from the negative effects of alcohol consumption.
It is true that the structure of human society hinders this process of natural selection by providing drunkards with an environment where they survive better than in a non-civilized world.
Like the ungulates that have been studied, so also elephants, monkeys and other animals eat or consume
Fruits and flowers containing sugars that are at varying levels of fermentation,
Sometimes, as a result of the agitation, a crowd is formed that causes intoxication,
The sugars are consumed as food - not for "entertainment",
There is no animal that consumes fizzy sugars or alcohol to "improve the mood",
The only one who does this is man,
Under natural conditions, evolution would filter out and eliminate the trait/need
Getting drunk as it is a trait that harms the ability of the drunk to survive.
Therefore, the consumption of alcohol by a person with the aim of getting drunk...
is cultural and social development,
Like other negative qualities, so too does rental exist only because
The social/cultural structure of the human population.
A structure that enables: the survival of those who use hallucinogenic drugs,
smoking tobacco, etc.
Therefore the attempt to explain and justify drunkenness as an "evolutionary" trait by comparison
Animals that consume sugars, or by remembering that in the past they consumed "ancestors"
of the human sugars that will ferment... is not true.
Dear Assaf Why do you think there is still no justification for abnormal human behavior?
flap.
Asaf,
You attribute drinking alcohol to a cultural practice. But why did the cultural practice develop in the first place? Drinking alcohol causes pleasure, as well as nicotine consumption. In order for a person to become addicted to any drug, he must consume it at least once. The hypothesis in the article tries to answer the question of why it was consumed the first time in the first place.
The possible answer in the text is that our ancestors were attracted to vibrant fruits because they have a high nutritional value.
Asaf,
Why the "attempts to justify" why there is no desire to find parallel behaviors for animals and humans?
Elephants and primates have high intelligence and hence a high level of consciousness. Why deny their intentional actions to cause pleasure? Drinking man-made liquor by elephants seems like an action that needs planning in advance and not a random food accident.
Attempts to justify extreme human activity that is not normal by comparing it to the activity of animals or by trying to humanize the behavior of animals,
Elephants do not get drunk because they "want to feel good", but simply eat delicious fruits,
The fermentation of the fruits and the production of alcohol is not "in the plan" and is not aware of the elephants,
This is also the case with monkeys and even our relatives apes,
It is said that the adversaries do not get drunk at all, for them the lively nectar is
food - not a drug,
Therefore again, there is no "evolutionary" justification for abnormal human behavior,
What influences and causes abnormal behavior are abnormal social conditions,
There are those who define it as "multiplicity".