Interesting
Plastered Primates – Carribean Island full of drink stealing monkeys
Advertisement
If you can, we highly recommend you visit St Kitts Island, located in the Caribbean, at some point in your life. It’s a beautiful spot with nice beaches and residents. It also has an intriguing troop of monkey’s who like to relax with a cocktail as much (if not more!) then it’s vacationing cohabits.
St Kitts Island is widely known for its inhabitants, the Green Vervet monkeys. It is said that there are approximately 18-20 thousand monkeys on the island, thus one can deduce that there can be at least one monkey for each individual person on the island, that alone proves how greatly inhabited the green vervet monkeys are on the island.
The green vervet monkeys first arrived on the island in the 16th, 17th century with slaves from West Africa who came to work in the rum industry. The land was dominated with sugar can plantations.
Some sugar cane would be left in the fields and ferment, creating alcohol. The monkey’s took a liking to the fermented sugar cane and it became a part of their diets.
Nowadays the monkeys will sit around looking for unfinished or unguarded drinks. They are usually up in a tree so they can have a good view of which unsuspecting tourist is leaving their spirits unprotected. When they spot an available drink, they rush over to the beverage and snatch it. The monkeys can be picky though and sometimes don’t consume a drink if it’s not to their taste (looking at you jagermeister)
A study was conducted involving 1,000 Vervet Monkey’s from St. Kitt’s to understand alcohol consumption effects and use in primates. Interestingly, the monkey community mirrors human’s with regard to alcohol consumption. With some monkey’s enjoying it more and some foregoing it completely. The results of the test summarized the 4 main categories of alcohol consumption for Vervet Monkey’s, the categories are;
- Social drinkers
- Steady drinkers
- Binge drinkers
- Teetotalers
Most of the population falls under social drinkers, they are known to drink in moderate quantities and usually when they are in group. Though they prefer their alcohol diluted with juice.
About 15 percent are steady drinkers and prefer their drinks to be diluted with water.
While about 5 percent are binge drinkers, usually drinking until they get drunk. These are the monkey’s that are most likely to begin fights, and are known to consume so much alcohol that they pass out. This category of drinkers are mostly males.
The remainder are Teetotalers – preferring soft drinks and abstaining from alcohol.
The binge drinkers are the troublemakers and have been known to raid local bars and beaches looking for cocktails. So if you find yourself soaking up the sun on a beautiful St. Kitt’s beach patio, make sure to keep one hand on your cocktail, because you can guarantee there is a monkey watching, waiting for you to be neglectful.
0 comments