Humans, in general, have a thing for alcohol. But why? The drunken monkey hypothesis may have the evolutionary answer you’ve been looking for.
Source: Drunken Monkeys: A Scientific Explanation for Our Drinking | VinePair
vinepair.com
March 29, 2017
Humans in general have a thing for alcohol. Drinking alcohol has been a part of the human experience for essentially as long as there have been humans. But why do humans like alcohol so much? The answer could go all the way back to evolution and what’s known as the drunken monkey hypothesis.The theory was originally put forth by Robert Dudley, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, in a 2000 article called “Evolutionary origins of human alcoholism in primate frugivory.” The hypothesis proposes that apes and early humans evolved to seek out ethyl alcohol because it led them to food. These early primates are known as frugivores, referring to their preference for fruit over any other food. But in order to locate that desirable fruit and those crucial calories, frugivores couldn’t just hit the local Whole Foods. They had to rely on their sense of smell. And one thing that routinely led them to fruit was the smell of alcohol.
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