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February 25, 2026<\/p>\n
2 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Chimpanzee pee reveals how our primate cousins are getting drunk on fermented fruit<\/p>\n A urinalysis shows that these apes ingest significant amounts of alcohol, providing new clues to how alcohol influences the animals\u2019 behavior<\/p>\n By K. R. Callaway edited by Claire Cameron<\/span><\/p>\n Chimps are voracious eaters with a soft spot for overripe fruit.<\/p>\n A chimpanzee might not walk into a bar, but these apes have a taste for alcohol.<\/p>\n Specifically, they consume alcohol inside fermented fruits, from figs to star apples to local stone fruits. As these fruits ripen, they produce sugars, which combine with yeast to produce ethanol. While the amount of ethanol in an individual piece of fruit is very small, chimps are voracious, with some eating about 4.5 kilograms of fruit a day. Old research suggested that, adjusted for body weight, a chimpanzee might ingest the equivalent of more than two standard alcoholic drinks a day. But proof of this consumption had been elusive\u2014until now.<\/p>\n A new analysis of chimpanzees\u2019 pee confirms that the apes ingest enough alcohol to show up on field tests of their urine. The finding could shed light on how the psychoactive substance affects the animals\u2019 behavior.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can\u2019t jump the gun on the conclusions, but there are a lot of avenues where the psychoactive influence of alcohol would be useful for chimpanzee behavior and ecology,\u201d says Aleksey Maro, a doctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of the study.<\/p>\n Maro and his team followed a group of chimps at Ngogo, a research site within Uganda\u2019s Kibale National Park. They collected the apes\u2019 urine and identified the presence of alcohol in the samples on-site with dipstick assays that are typically used to test humans for alcohol consumption.<\/p>\n We know that alcohol can significantly influence human behavior, whether by impairing our cognition or affecting our motor function\u2014not to mention by causing hangovers. But it\u2019s possible that consuming alcohol could proffer some benefit to chimps, for example, by lowering their anxiety while they guard their territory or by boosting socialization within their group.<\/p>\n Some researchers doubt that chimps seek out these effects the way humans might pursue a little light relief at a bar\u2014and it\u2019s unclear if chimps feel alcohol\u2019s effects in the same way we do.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a sense, alcohol makes humans more like chimpanzees,\u201d says Kevin Langergraber, a chimp ecologist at Arizona State University, who was not involved in the study. \u201cI have been at Ngogo many times when the chimpanzees are feeding on these supercrops of Chrysophyllum fruits and have never noticed that the chimps are behaving strangely.\u201d<\/p>\n Maro says a better way to think about the chimpanzees\u2019 alcohol ingestion is to compare it to sharing a bottle of wine with friends over a meal. The apes definitely consume the equivalent of a standard drink or two\u2019s worth of booze, but when they do so, they also have a full stomach and, perhaps, foster a closer relationship to their peers.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have a glass of wine with dinner; you talk to people. Maybe this is where it comes from evolutionarily,\u201d Maro says.<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" February 25, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Chimpanzee pee reveals how our primate cousins are getting drunk on fermented fruit A urinalysis shows that these apes ingest significant amounts of alcohol, providing new clues to how alcohol influences the animals\u2019 behavior By K. R. Callaway edited by Claire Cameron Chimps are<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[13544,23400,13592,13499,13500,19649,20162,572],"class_list":{"0":"post-45429","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-chimpanzee","9":"tag-cousins","10":"tag-drunk","11":"tag-fermented","12":"tag-fruit","13":"tag-pee","14":"tag-primate","15":"tag-reveals"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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