Scientists just named the ancient ape instinct behind your weekend beer craving

India Today

3 days ago

Why do humans reach for a cold beer after a long week? According to a new study, the roots of this age-old ritual might stretch all the way back to our ape ancestors, thanks to a newly recognised behaviour scientists have named 'scrumping.'In a paper published in the journal BioScience, researchers from Dartmouth College and the University of St Andrews propose that 'scrumping,' an English term for gathering or stealing windfallen, often-fermented fruit, was a regular activity among African apes that may have shaped our modern relationship with alcohol.advertisementThe study's lead author, Professor Nathaniel Dominy of Dartmouth, points out that for years, scientists failed to distinguish between apes eating fruit in trees and those munching ripe, sometimes fermented fruit off the forest floor. Without a word to describe ground-foraged feasts, this crucial difference—and its evolutionary impact—remained obscured.
Social aspects of scrumping could also influence modern drinking habits. (Photo: Getty)
But 'scrumping' now has scientific standing. By analysing decades of wild ape dietary reports and cross-referencing feeding height and fruiting location, the researchers found African apes—including chimpanzees and gorillas—routinely 'scrump,' consuming fermented fruits that naturally contain ethanol. Orangutans, on the other hand, showed little evidence of this behaviour.The implications are profound. A 2015 genetic study revealed a single amino acid change in the ancestor of humans and African apes, boosting their ability to metabolise alcohol by 40-fold. This adaptation might have freed our forebears from competing with monkeys for unripe fruit in trees and protected them from dangerous falls by letting them feast safely on the ground.'What's remarkable is that chimpanzees could be consuming non-trivial amounts of alcohol daily,' Dominy notes, highlighting that our ability to digest alcohol predates humanity's invention of brewing.Social aspects of scrumping could also influence modern drinking habits, speculates co-author Professor Catherine Hobaiter. 'A fundamental feature of our relationship with alcohol is our tendency to drink together,' she observes.With their proposal to adopt 'scrumping' as a scientific term, the authors hope to bring this pivotal evolutionary behaviour to light, illuminating why, millions of years later, humans still gather with friends to enjoy a fermented treat.- Ends