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From: Primum Sapienti <invalide@invalid.invalid>
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Subject: Wild chimps filmed sharing fermented breadfruit
Date: Thu, 1 May 2025 21:06:35 -0600
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https://news.exeter.ac.uk/faculty-of-environment-science-and-economy/wild-chimps-filmed-sharing-boozy-fruit/

For the first time, wild chimpanzees have
been pictured eating and sharing fruit
containing alcohol.

A research team led by the University of
Exeter set up cameras in Guinea-Bissau’s
Cantanhez National Park.

Footage of chimps sharing fermented African
breadfruit – confirmed to contain ethanol
(alcohol) – raises fascinating questions
about if and why chimps deliberately seek
out alcohol.
....


https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982225002817
Wild chimpanzees share fermented fruits

Summary
The use of fermented foods and drinks by
humans is so widespread as to be considered
ubiquitous, with their use largely linked
to dietary benefits and social bonding.
The discovery of a molecular adaptation in
an alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme that greatly
increased ethanol metabolism in the common
ancestor of African apes suggests that the
incorporation of fermented fruit in the human
diet has ancient origins. However, little is
known about the inclusion of ethanolic foods
in the diet of nonhuman great apes. Here, we
document for the first time the repeated
ingestion and sharing of naturally fermented
African breadfruit (Treculia africana) with
confirmed ethanol (alcohol), by wild
chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in
Cantanhez National Park, Guinea-Bissau.
Widespread plant food sharing in great apes
and the recent confirmation of ethanol
presence in diverse fruit species5 suggest
the sharing, and dietary incorporation, of
ethanol-containing foods is extensive and
may have played a long-standing role in
hominoid societies.