… can’t resist this first – evolution of metabolizing booze:
From The Scientist: How we are able to metabolize booze:
A mutation in an ethanol-metabolizing enzyme arose around the time that arboreal primates shifted to a more terrestrial lifestyle, perhaps as an adaptation to eating fermented fruit.
Why are humans so attracted to alcohol, and why do so many struggle with its abuse? These are questions that science still can’t answer. The “drunken monkey” hypothesis proposed by University of California, Berkeley, biologist Robert Dudley posits that, unlike our attraction to other addictive drugs, our use and sometimes dependence on alcohol stems from the millions of years our ancient primate ancestors spent consuming ripe, fermented fruits. Perhaps these predecessors evolved some kind of neurological mechanism that drove them to seek out and consume sugar-rich, ethanol-containing foods, which were likely in short supply millions of years ago. But now that there’s a liquor store on every other corner, that drive to seek out alcohol has turned against us. (See “Drunks and Monkeys,” The Scientist, June 2014.)
“There’s all these anecdotal stories of . . . a monkey eating rotten fruit and getting tipsy,” says Matthew Carrigan of Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida. “But what hasn’t been done is to actually apply a real scientific test of this theory.” So, during his time at the nearby Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, which emphasizes a paleogenetic approach to understanding human health problems, Carrigan decided to explore the evolutionary history of our ability to metabolize booze. More.
Next: The evolution of chocolate pretzels 😉
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