This story first appeared on news.com.au

SCIENTISTS have discovered a group of booze-loving apes who they think may hold the key to why humans enjoy drinking alcohol. Wild chimpanzees have shed light on a theory about evolution.

Chimps in the west African country go Guines discovered a free treat in raffia palms tapped by local people to extract a sweet, milky sap which then ferments into an alcoholic drink. The apes scrunched up leaves in their mouths, moulding them into spongy pads that they then dipped into the sap-gathering container, which villagers attach to the tree near its crown.

Tests showed that the beverage’s alcoholic content varied from 3.1 per cent to a whopping 6.9 per cent, the equivalent of strong beer.

Some of the chimps went a little, well, ape.

“(They) consumed significant quantities of ethanol (alcohol) and displayed behavioural signs of inebriation,” the paper said soberly…

The chimps are part of a closely-observed colony at Bossou in southern Guinea… Cases of animals ingesting alcohol are not exceptional. They include Swedish moose that get drunk on fermented apples, and monkeys on the Caribbean island of St Kitts that sneak gulps from vacationers’ cocktails. But the Bossou chimps, observed over 17 years, are the first to provide serious data about how much alcohol can be knocked back in the wild, and when.

Sometimes, just a single chimp would go to the top of the palm, the researchers found. But on occasions, there would be “drinking sessions” when several chums would gather in the crown of the tree. “Individuals either co-drank, with drinkers alternating dips of their leaf-sponges into the fermented palm sap, or one individual monopolised the container, whereas others waited their turn,” the paper said.

The findings back the so-called “drunken monkey” theory — that apes and humans share a genetic ability to break down alcohol that was handed down from a common ancestor.

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