ADAPTATION

a telling story:

Adapatation, for our purposes, refers to the understanding of Adaptive Value in Tinbergen's four questions. This term represents the combined influence of traits which affect, either positively or negatively, the fitness of the animal. For the vervet monkeys, the adaptation of an addiction to alcohol reduces their fitness as a function of reproductive success and individual survival.

Alcoholism in vervet monkeys does not only affect brain systems. In fact, the consumption of alcohol by these primates has a strong negative effect on their day to day functioning. J. Dee Higley and Allyson J. Bennett have noticed strong correlations between human and non-human primates regarding Type I and Type II-like alcohol abuse and the behaviors commonly associated with such classifications.

Monkeys categorized as Type I showed:drink

- high levels of anxiety

-situational stress

which led to high alcohol intake by individuals. Those monkeys with which exhibited Type II behaviors showed:

-individual’s lack of impulse control.

-low CSF 5-HIAA (a seratonin metabolite)

These Type II individuals engaged in spontaneous behaviors that provided them some reward, but only after placing themselves at risk. These risks included entering food baited traps, jumping from dangerous heights to get from one tree to another, and consuming dangerously large amounts of alcohol. On the extreme end, Type II classified vervet monkeys showed impaired social skills, social alienation, and violent aggression [5].

not ideal:

Alcohol for vervet monkeys, as it does for humans, provides a momentary sense of relief resulting in lasting negative adaptive effects. Behaviors that monkeys use daily to survive and prosper in their habitat such as climbing, jumping, and living in a group are negatively affected by the consumption of alcohol. Just as humans use alcohol to deal with stress, vervet monkeys do and in turn lose their ability to deal with anxiety and function independently of the drug. Their behaviors adapt to become violent and isolated, the opposite of what is beneficial for a species with as rich of a social existence as they have. Though alcoholism in this species certainly affects how it functions in its environment, it is certainly not a valuable adaptation [5].