Primates have fun to drink: we can't be without it

Useful Drunken monkeys have been discoveredNewspaper.
Ru

A three-minute BBC video, which has enjoyed a resounding success, posted recently on YouTube and has already gained 4.2 million views, demonstrates how agile monkeys steal cocktails from bars in Caribbean resorts, get drunk and arrange drunken brawls. However, behind the funny plot, which caused an increased but rapidly passing interest among the Internet audience, there is a whole battery of environmental and scientific problems that biologists have been dealing with for a long time.

A huge number of alcoholic bars, as well as alcoholic cocktails left unfinished on the beaches and recreation areas of Caribbean resorts, have made ethyl–containing liquids, abundantly flavored with sugar, juices and fruits, easily accessible to very curious and active lifestyle representatives of Chlorocebus pygerythrus - monkeys of the monkey family. As a result, over decades of free libations, a group of hereditary alcoholic monkeys has formed within the monkey population.

Experts from the Canadian Center for Medical Research and the Foundation for Behavioral Sciences undertook to investigate the phenomenon back in the 90s, since then publishing articles on this topic.

For a long time, biologists have been studying a community of thousands of Chlorocebus pygerythrus, specially caught for in vivo research. In particular, it was found that the alcoholic preferences of animals differ little or almost nothing from human ones.

The majority (65%) of monkeys preferred to drink alcohol only occasionally, preferably with fruit juice, preferably in the afternoon and preferably in friendly company.

The second group, or 15% of the population, consisted of regular drinkers who preferred either undiluted alcohol or diluted in water without added sugar or juice. It's funny that the drinkers were distinguished by developed sociality and showed, as a rule, good leadership qualities: they were able to maintain order in the group, showing dominant character traits. Such alcoholic monkeys turned out to be functionally very useful from the point of view of the collective.

The smallest part of the community (5%) turned out to be real drunks. These preferred to consume their portions of alcohol in one sitting, got into fights and quickly drank themselves senseless. As in human collectives, young individuals prevailed among the real drunks. In the case of unlimited access to alcohol, their life expectancy was sharply reduced, and death occurred after 2-3 months.

Finally, the remaining 15% of monkeys consumed alcohol at all, or consumed very little.

Thus, the point of view on the spread of drunkenness and alcoholism as a phenomenon provoked by external, socio-cultural circumstances should be somewhat corrected, since the hereditary component in the propensity to alcohol, as shown by the study of monkeys, plays a rather large role in the development and dynamics of social drunkenness. This should also make appropriate adjustments in the allocation of priorities in the fight against social alcoholism, increasing the role of monitoring and preventing the development of persistent alcohol dependence in young people with poor heredity.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru 27.04.2011