Question: it has recently been discovered that monkeys are getting drunk on alcohol why and how is this happening and can it cause any damage?

Martha Havenith answered on 18 Jun 2015:

As Alison said, the way monkeys and humans get drunk is the same. We even seem to experience getting drunk in a similar way – in the wild, monkeys apparently eat rotten fruit on purpose sometimes to get themselves tipsy. Apart from activating the ‘reward’ center in the brain, alcohol also basically quiets the neurons down: It decreases the amount of glutamate (that’s a messenger in the brain that excites other neurons) and increases the amount of GABA (that’s a messenger that shuts other neurons up). That explains why it’s harder to think straight, remember things, walk straight etc. – your brain is literally ‘only half there’ for a bit.