Is red wine good for an ape’s heart?

Apparently, zookeepers in Budapest, Hungary mix in red wine daily with their primates’ tea. The headline “Zoo apes have taste for red wine “ grabbed me I’ll admit. (OK, I’m a little it addicted to weird news. It’s a guilty pleasure that I justify since I don’t really watch reality TV.) In the interest of full disclosure, they don’t serve the apes really good wine, just the cheap stuff.

So I started thinking, if I was the zoo wine steward, what would I recommend to my furry guests?

Here’s a list of some common foods that different primates eat while in captivity:
· Gorillas eat big green salads every day, with raw vegetables, very little fruit, high fiber biscuits.
· Spider monkeys eat quite a bit of fruit, as well as raw vegetables, green leaves, and primate biscuits.
· Orangutans enjoy high-fiber primate biscuits, vegetables like carrots and yams, and a minimal amount of fruit (no more than about 15 percent of total diet), as well as branches and leaves of local trees.
· A golden bamboo lemur eats, among other things, a particular bamboo with a high level of cyanides, which would kill other animals.
· Baboons’ staples include fruit, leaves, nuts, grubs.
· Chimps are also primarily vegetarians eating fruit, leaves and shoots from local trees, and nuts.

Thank you to Scholastic.com for much of the info on this list.

So based on their diet and the fact that we’re looking for maximum antioxidant benefit, I’m thinking Pinot Noir or Zinfandel. A better gastronomic pairing would probably be a Sauvignon Blanc or even a Pinot Grigio to balance the crispness of the leaves and high fiber biscuits. What would you recommend? Any favorites for these primates?

One other ape diet fact, in captivity, these guys have a fairly high rate of obesity and diabetes. Hmmm. What’s next a smoking ape ?

---

Comments