Posted on 04/17/2014 12:05:01 PM PDT by BuckeyeTexan
As the child of an alcoholic father, Robert Dudley long wondered what caused the destructive allure of alcohol. Then while working in the Panamanian forest as a biologist, Dudley saw monkeys eating ripe fruit, which likely contained small amounts of the stuff, and an answer occurred to him: Maybe alcoholism is an evolutionary hangover.
Had fruit-eating animals, including human ancestors, gained an evolutionary advantage by learning to associate the smell and taste of alcohol with ripe fruit? Dudley wondered. He named this concept the drunken monkey hypothesis. "I thought it was too simple an idea not to have been thought of previously," he told Live Science. But he found no record of it.
Now, about 15 years after conceiving the idea, Dudley, who studies the physiology and biomechanics of flight at the University of California, Berkeley, has published a book, "The Drunken Monkey: Why We Drink and Abuse Alcohol" (University of California Press, 2014) that delves into the evolution of humans' and other animals' attraction to fruit, and as a result, alcohol.
Introducing the drunken monkey
The concept goes like this: Microscopic fungi, called yeast, turn the naturally occurring sugar in fruit into a chemical known as ethanol, which most people know better as alcohol. Fruit-eating animals — everything from primates and other mammals to insects and reptiles —began to use the scent of ethanol as a cue to find ripe fruit. Ethanol offers other benefits as well: it helps preserve the fruit from bacterial spoilage and stimulates the appetite of whatever consumes it (think of an aperitif).
Scientists know little about the natural occurrence of ethanol and its role in diet for many species, Dudley writes.
"It's not just Napa vineyards and drunks on the street. There is actually a much broader natural background
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Or maybe the reverse.
Alcoholics and druggies Darwin’s Dolts.
Everything has an evolutionary basis. It’s ipso facto.
These sort of sociobiological analyses are fun and interesting.
They, though, are pretty much unprovable.
They are very much a modern day variation on the Just-So story.
I agree with you 100%.
me too....
I think it’s fun to think about the possible survival advantages of different traits, and how they might play out over varying conditions through the millennia.
However, it’s not really “science” in any meaningful sense.
well if I actually thought I came from a monkey it would have to be of the drunken variety
obsession of the mind allergy of the body
Not sure how to take this.
Certainly.
I think he may be onto something there.
Dos Casabas?...............Two Melons?...............
Dos Casabas?...............Two Melons?...............
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Twin melons is considered by many to be the best source of liquid refreshment.
Given the cause-and-effect relationship between alcohol and procreative behavior, ...
I have a hard time believing sauce sends you the way of the dodo bird.
OOOOOHHHH!...He meant ‘Dos Gajungas’!...................
Our laboratory housed a group of monkeys who all got set free by accident, and they ran outside to climb up the nearest tree. our animal caretaker got a bottle of bourbon and soaked a whole loaf of bread in the booze. We distributed slices of bread all around the base of the tree and they consumed by the monkeys. In a few minutes we could easily pick up the drunken monkeys and return them to their cages.
Of course its evolutionary, when I am drinking I become much more attractive
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