CHIMPS down alcohol equivalent to two glasses of wine a day, scientists have found.

The apes are known in the wild to get a buzz from fermented fruit such as mouldy figs and mangoes — but it was unclear how much they guzzled.

And experts now reckon humans may have inherited their taste for booze from our common ancestor.

A team from California University studied chimpanzees in Uganda and the Ivory Coast, and tested fallen fruits and urine samples for alcohol content.

They estimated chimps consume an average of 14mg of pure alcohol, known as ethanol, per day.

One unit in the UK is 8mg, so the chimps’ consumption is equal to just over 1.5 units — the same as a small 125ml glass of wine.

But as chimps weigh about half as much as humans, the effect would be more like us having two

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