Alcohol|There is ethanol in fermented fruits and berries, and concentrations have been calculated in Finland as well.
The summary is made by artificial intelligence and checked by a human.
Animals may consume alcohol clearly more than imagined, an international ecological group reports.
Ethanol is present in almost all ecosystems.
Naturally fermented fruit usually reaches only 1-2 percent alcohol by volume.
There is no advantage to getting drunk if you are climbing trees or surrounded by predators at night. According to researchers, ethanol can still be beneficial for animals.
The human species does not spit in the glass. However, people have assumed that alcohol consumption in other animal species would be rare and random.
Banana flies are known to prefer fermented fruit and beetles enjoy beer, but often stories about drunken wild animals, and especially vertebrates, have mostly been considered anecdotes.
In Sweden, for example, a moose that appeared to be intoxicated remained in 2011 clinging to an apple tree, the rotten apples of which it had apparently eaten.
Now an international ecological group questions the assumption about alcohol consumption in animals. According to them, other animal species may also consume much more alcohol than has been imagined.
“It’s much more abundant in nature than we thought, and the vast majority of animals that eat sweet fruits are exposed to some amount of ethanol,” says a behavioral biologist at the British University of Exeter Anna C. Bowland in a research bulletin.
Research review is published Wednesday in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, and Bowland is first author.
Ethanol began to appear abundantly in nature about one hundred million years ago, based on molecular studies it has been estimated. At that time, flowering plants began to produce sweet nectar and fruit that yeast could ferment.
Today, ethanol is found in almost all ecosystems, although concentrations are higher and production is more year-round in the humid tropics compared to temperate zones.
Naturally fermented fruit usually reaches only 1-2 percent alcohol by volume.
in Helsinki low maximum ethanol concentrations have been found in rowan berries, hawthorn berries, and rosy rose hips, the research team writes and refers Kalervo Eriksson’s and Helena Nummen for research from the 1980s. The alcohol volumes were 0.05–0.41 percentage units.
On the other hand, overripe palm tree fruits have been found in Panama, Central America, with an alcohol content of 10.3% by volume.
A capuchin monkey eats in a tree.
Getting drunk it is not to your advantage if you climb trees or move around at night surrounded by predators, points out the person who led the study Matthew Carrigan in the bulletin.
“From a non-human perspective, animals want calories but not intoxication,” says the molecular biologist and professor at the College of Central Florida.
People, on the other hand, want to get drunk, but they are not so keen on the calories contained in alcohol.
It is unclear whether the animals deliberately consume ethanol for its own sake.
However, according to researchers, ethanol can be beneficial for animals. Ethanol provides calories that animals crave, and the aromatic compounds produced during fermentation may direct animals to food.
Additionally, ethanol may have medical benefits. Fruit flies deliberately lay their eggs on a substance containing ethanol, which protects the eggs from parasites.
It has also been thought that ethanol could trigger the animals’ endorphin and dopamine systems and lead to relaxation, which could have social benefits. However, further research is needed, says Bowland.