Hey if you’re a person that needs to believe that Jesus rode on a Brontosaurus 2,000 years ago, and whichever god you worship made humans exactly in his/her image so there is no such thing as evolution then please knock yourself out with those notions. However, watching these chimps getting sloshed on alcohol just like any drunk humans at your local bar may make you question everything.
These chimps in West Africa have a penchant for getting their drink on. However they don’t tap the keg, they tap raffia palm trees. Their poison of choice? Sweet palm wine.
Locals in Bossou, Guinea slice open the raffia palms and it oozes palm sap that drips into containers that are left unattended throughout the day. The sap then ferments into a wine. The chimps have taken a liking to the boozy treat, get drunk and turn up.
Kimberley J. Hockings of Oxford Brookes University in the United Kingdom has documented the primates for the last 17 years. Her team observed 51 instances of 13 chimps drinking the palm wine in the Bossou area. Jeez you sots, maybe check into a program to control that shit.
Generally, the chimps consume a liter of wine, which has an alcohol content from 3.1 to 6.9 percent, equivalent to about three beers. Fucking lightweights.
From the New Scientist:
They even speculate that the chimps acted a bit tipsy a couple of times following a tipple. For example, they once rested right after going on a wine binge. Another time, a male drinker seemed restless and kept moving from one tree to another for about an hour while other chimps were getting ready to sleep.
I just want to go to the safari right now and share a nice Malbec wine with poor monkeys who don’t have access to fermented tree sap. I’d be a hero.