Many animals have been known to consume fermented fruit, sometimes intentionally, and experience the psychoactive effects of alcohol. It turns out that chimpanzees (Scientific name: Pan troglodytes), our closest living relative, consume the equivalent of almost one and a half alcoholic beverages a day via their regular diet.
A paper "Ethanol ingestion via frugivory in wild chimpanzees" published in Science Advances, September 17, 2025, Vol. 11, Issue 38, studied the pulp from fruit enjoyed by chimpanzees in Côte d'Ivoire and Uganda. The amount of fruit consumed daily produced 14 grams of ethanol, the human equivalent of 1.4 drinks. As this amount would be consumed over the course of a full day, this would only result in mild intoxication, if any.
The findings in the paper support the hypothesis that ethanol is regularly present in tropical fruit, and its consumption by our ancestors may have resulted in modern humans' fondness for alcohol.
As lead author Aleksey Maro (right) said, "Naturally occurring dietary alcohol is inseparable from food, which may help explain why our species is so fond of the stuff. During periods of food scarcity, a physiological tolerance for dietary ethanol could have been crucial for survival, leading towards a fondness for ethanol that persists to this day". 🍺🍺🍺
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