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Great apes 'scrump for boozy fruit
BBC Wildlife
|October 2025
Dietary habits of ancient great apes help to explain why humans are so good at metabolising alcohol
SCIENCE MAY FINALLY have discovered why us humans are so good at drinking booze.
A new study, published in the journal BioScience, suggests that we owe our ability to metabolise alcohol to our great ape ancestors' penchant for feasting on fallen, fermented fruit.
It's known that humans and other African great apes, such as gorillas and chimps, have a mutation in a gene, called alcohol dehydrogenase 4 (ADH4), that makes them good at breaking down alcohol. Compared with orangutans and other primates that lack the mutation, they are 40 times better at metabolising booze.
This story is from the October 2025 edition of BBC Wildlife.
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