Tool use by our primate cousins (and a few of our human ones) is the kind of behavior that gets primatologists all excited, but you don’t need a degree to raise a glass to these chimps that have figured out how to get a good buzz on.
The researchers saw 51 instances in which 13 chimps used leaf sponges to drink fermenting sap. “I was fascinated by this behavior,” study lead author Kimberley Hockings, a behavioral ecologist at Oxford Brookes University in England, told Live Science.”To harvest the palm wine, chimpanzees at Bossou use a leafy tool as a spongy drinking vessel.”
The sap averaged about 3.1 to 6.9 percent alcohol, or 6.2 to 13.8 proof.
If you thought falling from a bar stool was bad, imagine tumbling from the top of a palm tree. Major party foul.
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