In the dense, fruit-laden forests of Africa, a previously overlooked behavior may hold the key to understanding a fundamental aspect of human evolution: our remarkable ability to metabolize alcohol.

Their findings revealed a striking pattern: African great apes engage in scrumping regularly, whereas orangutans, which inhabit Southeast Asian forests, display this behavior scarcely, if at all. This divergence supports biochemical analyses showing that orangutans possess much less efficient enzymes for metabolizing ethanol. The implication is that the consumption of fermented fruits—and the genetic adaptations enabling safe ethanol metabolism—emerged uniquely within the evolutionary lineage leading to African apes and humans.