Al Jazeera reported this from a study of chimpanzees in Guinea-Bissau.
During a 17-year study, chimps in the West African country of Guinea were observed on numerous occasions imbibing a fermented milky sap from raffia palms, tapped by local people to make into an alcoholic drink.
Incidents of lone drinkers and communal sessions were seen, according to a paper published in the British journal Royal Society Open Science.
Researchers suggested the findings give insight into the social habits of chimpanzees in the wild. They also back the “drunken monkey” theory, which holds that apes and humans share a genetic ability to break down alcohol that was handed down from a common ancestor.
Under observation, the apes scrunched up leaves in their mouths, molding them into spongy pads that they then dipped into the sap-gathering container, which villagers attach to the tree near its crown.
Tests showed that the beverage’s alcoholic content varied from 3.1 percent to 6.9 percent — the equivalent of strong beer.
Meanwhile, the New Scientist noted that gelada baboons in eastern Africa appear to have domesticated wolves.
In the alpine grasslands of eastern Africa, Ethiopian wolves and gelada monkeys are giving peace a chance. The geladas – a type of baboon – tolerate wolves wandering right through the middle of their herds, while the wolves ignore potential meals of baby geladas in favour of rodents, which they can catch more easily when the monkeys are present.
The unusual pact echoes the way dogs began to be domesticated by humans [. . .], and was spotted by primatologist Vivek Venkataraman, at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, during fieldwork at Guassa plateau in the highlands of north-central Ethiopia.
Even though the wolves occasionally prey on young sheep and goats, which are as big as young geladas, they do not normally attack the monkeys – and the geladas seem to know that, because they do not run away from the wolves.
“You can have a wolf and a gelada within a metre or two of each other and virtually ignoring each other for up to 2 hours at a time,” says Venkataraman. In contrast, the geladas flee immediately to cliffs for safety when they spot feral dogs, which approach aggressively and often prey on them.
When walking through a herd – which comprises many bands of monkeys grazing together in groups of 600 to 700 individuals – the wolves seem to take care to behave in a non-threatening way. They move slowly and calmly as they forage for rodents and avoid the zigzag running they use elsewhere, Venkataraman observed.