I can kind of see alcohol being a powerful evolutionary mover: water sources are frequently contaminated, killing off lots of drinkers, and the kinds of biological contaminants frequently are more deadly in the young, (yes animals get sick from drinking dirty water just like people) while alcohol can be a decontaminant and is often present with hydrating water as well as other nutrients and energy sources (like fruit) keeping drinkers of both alive maybe long enough to reproduce.
I don't have a link to the video but: There's an island in the caribbean that has little monkeys who love to steal tourists' alcoholic drinks. Only about 12% of the monkeys drink the alcohol (repeatedly going back to it), the same rate of alcoholism in humans. I thought that was interesting, monkeys and humans have the same rate of alcoholism, I guess the AA group was right, maybe alcoholism is a genetic disease.
> I don't have a link to the video but: There's an island in the caribbean that has little monkeys who love to steal tourists' alcoholic drinks. Only about 12% of the monkeys drink the alcohol, the same rate of alcoholism in humans. I thought that was interesting, monkeys and humans have the same rate of alcoholism
You seem to equate "drinking alcohol" with "alcoholism" for monkeys, but not for humans. This might be justified -- maybe only monkeys with something reasonably analogous to alcoholism will drink alcohol at all -- but it seems a lot like taking numbers that match and inferring a pattern even though the thing being measured isn't the same.
Sorry I forgot to specify 12% of the monkeys repeatedly and habitually stole alcoholic drinks. Much higher numbers of monkeys steal the alcohol but after tasting it abandon the drinks.
I have also read that alcohol was one of the first medicinal ingredient discovered by man. Elephants too like to get a bit high by eating overly ripe fruits.
