The Pub, The Gene and the Name Game

Scientists believe they have stumbled upon an evolutionary super power which has been right under their noses all along …and on our lips for millions of years.

I am told that confession is good for the soul, so I’ll hold my hand up: I have been to the pub three times in the past week.  Once to meet a former colleague, once in a pre-pub-quiz lunch and thence to a second pub for the quiz itself.

Each pub, on each occasion, had been full as an egg, but according to Monday’s Today Programme, ‘ the British Beer and Pub Association presented numbers suggesting a steady decline in pubs right across the country, every year since 2000.’

Which is a worry because this week I also learned that alcohol could be our species’ evolutionary super power.

The Today Programme turned to Michael Turner, the former Chairman of Fullers, who’d recently retired after 50 years in the business, for his take on the decline of the pub.

” …Certainly the (pub) consumer has become much more knowledgeable, far more demanding, they know what they want… They want something different.  The atmosphere is so much better (now). We put so much more into the décor.  In the old days the pubs, they were beautiful Victorian buildings, with lovely etched glass in the windows, but you couldn’t see in…”

Interesting point that. Our forebears foregathered en masse in the pubs, but they didn’t feel compelled to exhibit their consumption to passers-by.  Their ‘local’ was primarily a place for reinforcing family and community ties, sharing knowledge and seeking advice, and establishing and maintaining a personal identity within a particular area, particularly after the geographic and social fragmentation of the Industrial Revolution. 

And of course none of them realised that they were at the fag-end of an evolutionary trail that had started of millions of years ago in the African Savannah.

In fact, until very recently, neither did science.

In the same week that the Today Programme were mourning the demise of the British pub, their colleagues on Inside Science were announcing a major new booze-based discovery with implications for our entire evolutionary story.

But the way they actually hit upon the discovery was almost as interesting (to me) as the discovery itself, as Primatologist ‘Cat’ Hobaiter of St Andrews University explained:

“…About ten years ago there was a very interesting genetics paper that essentially showed that (for) African apes, gorillas, bonobos chimpanzees and us, our version of the gene that helps you metabolize alcohol  is about forty times more efficient than that in other primates.  So other primates can (metabolize) but we are sort of supercharged to be able to do this. And nobody really knew why….”

“The history of ideas is paved by constraints of language.”

“What we realized was that we really didn’t have a word for discriminating when primates were eating fruit from trees or eating fruit on the ground. And that might turn out to be really important, because the fruit that’s on the ground is the really over-ripe stuff, the stuff that’s had a chance to ferment, get a little bit more alcohol and ethanol in it, so it might be a great situation to be exposed to alcohol, but we didn’t really have a way to describe it, because we just describe Primates as Frugivores, eating fruit is eating fruit. 

At the same time, we actually all had that data available to us, because we pay a lot of attention to where a Primate is. Is it on the ground. Is it up in the trees. We pay attention to what it’s eating.  We just never put those two data sets together. And we think one of the reasons that that was overlooked was there wasn’t really a conveniently simple term for “feeding on fermented fruit on the ground.”  …So we decided we would go with the beautifully euphonic word ‘Scrumping.”

So what’s the big win?

Back in April this year, footage was released by a team at the University of Exeter that, for the first time, showed chimps actually sharing fermented fruit and eating together.  And that could also be a massive discovery, according to Kimberly Hockings, a researcher who was part of the team.

“For humans, we know that drinking alcohol leads to release of dopamine and endorphins and resulting feelings of happiness and relaxation.  We also know that sharing alcohol -including through such traditions as feasting- helps to form and strengthen social bonds. So now we know that wild chimpanzees are sharing alcoholic fruits, the question is: Could they be getting similar benefits?”

And therefore is alcohol consumption perhaps a special evolutionary super power, enabling all our species (humans, chimps, gorillas and bonobos) to bond in stronger, more cohesive social groups?

Another question, for us in The Business of Pleasure, is that have we, like the Primatologists, maybe failed to connect two or more data-sets because we do not yet have the words to describe discreet (uniquely different) audience behaviours simply and distinctly?  Even though we ourselves have also been observing Primates (the ones attending our cinemas, theatres and concerts) for years?

As Cat Hobaiter, the ‘Scrumping’ Scientist put it:

“Now you would think that if you’re sat there, as many Primatologists do, watching these Primates every day, you would, you know, this is literally our job to pay attention to their behaviour, that you would be noticing all the small details, and we do try, but it’s definitely the case that if you don’t have a word for something, sometimes it just doesn’t catch your attention…”

Possible extensions to The Business of Pleasure Primate Lexicon….

Perhaps we should start with a new word to describe those patrons of our pubs, venues and attractions (and, in particular, Opera Houses) who are primarily there to be seen, rather than to enjoy the experience of being there?*

Or the peculiar subset of that group for whom any show is just an opportunity to demonstrate their degree of hierarchical elevation by spending an outrageously inflated sum for a ticket.**

Or those time-poor 'cultural vultures' who merely pick at the bones of a performance in order to tick a box in their to-do list, without fully absorbing what they are watching.***

Because if we don’t pay more rigorous attention to the language defining the behaviours of all the separate sub-species which make up our audiences, and their individual ‘feeding habits,’ we are likely to find our venues going into the same kind of irreversible free fall as the pub.

DT 6 Aug 2025

*Perhaps ‘Boxers’ might be appropriate, given that traditional box seats (and some more-recent VIP areas) were created to ‘be seen from, rather than to see from.”

**Perhaps ‘Y-Fronts’ as in “why do they need 'front' so badly?”

***…’Briefs?’