Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Do you want a glass of wine with your dinner? Eating habits of Our ancestors of monkey Maybe to blame.
To better understand the relationship between humans and alcohol, Researchers study The penchant of animals for fermented and fallen fruits, newly called “burning”.
“The quarrel of the last common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees and humans about 10 million years ago could explain why humans are so incredibly good for digesting alcohol,” said Nathaniel Dominy, the anthropology teacher at Charles Hansen at Dartmouth College, in a statement.
“We have evolved to metabolize alcohol well before understanding how to do it and doing it was one of the main engines of the Neolithic revolution that transformed hunter-gatherers into farmers and changed the world,” he added.
Fermentation is the process by which bacteria and other microorganisms decompose sugars into substances such as alcohols or acids. All the alcohol we drink is done in this way.
When you drink alcohol, you will take it because you consume faster that your metabolism can not manage it. In the monkeys, the researchers said that this does not seem to be the case.
Geneticists have previously pointed out that the consumption of fermented fruits may have led to a biological change in the last common ancestor of humans and African monkeys that have strengthened their ability to metabolize alcohol at 40 times.
However, no one had the data to test them, and the scientists had not differentiated the fruits in the trees of that on the soil when studying primates since then.
“It was simply not on our radar,” said Dominy. “It is not that primatologists have never seen scrambling – they observe it regularly. But the absence of word has disguised its importance.”
The team wanted to know what meaning managing for human evolution, so he analyzed previous research on the eating habits of orangutans, chimpanzees and mountain and western gorillas in the wild.
Studies included thousands of primates who eat fruit. If a monkey at ground level has been recorded by eating known fruits to push at the average or higher levels of the forest canopy, it was considered to be shuffle.
Among the three species, African monkeys proved to be “exciting” regularly, unlike Orangs-Outans. To better understand the consumption of alcohol of chimpanzees, the researchers will then measure the levels of fermentation in the fruits in the trees, compared to that on the ground.
The researchers said that their results confirm the results of previous research which had also revealed that the main enzyme of ethanol metabolization – found in alcoholic beverages – is relatively ineffective in orangutans and other non -human primates.
Researchers believe that the capacity of African monkeys to metabolize ethanol can allow them safely consuming 10 pounds of fruit every day.
This level of admission suggests that exposure to ethanol could be an important component of the life of the chimpanzee and a force majeure of human evolution. Humans may have kept the social aspects that the monkeys bring to scrumping, said Catherine Hobaiter, professor of psychology and neuroscience in St Andrews.
“A fundamental characteristic of our relationship with alcohol is our tendency to drink together, whether it is a pint with friends or a big social holiday,” she added. “The next step is to study how shared food on fermented fruits could also influence social relationships in other monkeys.”
