Look What Happens When Monkeys Get Hammered

These monkeys are all of us on holiday. Enjoying the sun, having a few bevvies, maybe even a fruity cocktail. Then spinning out and behaving like a tit.

In the clip, the creatures are seen spilling, dropping, and then licking the alcohol back up from the tables.

By the end of it, they're sprawled on the floor with their entire faces inside a half-empty cocktail glass. Nice.

While the video is bloody hilarious - who doesn't love a monkey staggering off a table? - it's hard to ignore how familiar their behaviour is.

Researchers who studied 1,000 monkeys and their drinking habits found that their behaviour is very similar to humans'.

They found that each monkey fell into one of four categories.

The majority were social drinkers - alcohol diluted in fruit juice, and only drinking when with other monkeys. They also don't like to get stuck in before lunchtime.

15 percent were regular drinkers. These monkeys like the taste of alcohol and don't want it diluted. They're very functional and dominant in social groups - the charming one who drinks A LOT but seems to be able to handle it better than everyone else.

Then there are the binge drinkers. This is about five percent of the monkeys, who drink fast, throw punches, and could easily drink themselves to death within a matter of months.

The last group are the teetotalers, who drink nothing at all.

The end results of too much booze seem to be the same regardless of your species - getting a bit too lairy, picking fights, losing coordination.

Researchers have long suspected that alcoholism could be genetic and run in families. It's hard to study it in humans, but they're planning to study the Vervet monkeys for now.

Hopefully it'll help us to understand why even people who have their act together end up as alcoholics.

So yeah - enjoy the cute video of the monkeys making an absolute tit of themselves, but if you catch your mate Phil pulling tables over at the end of a big session maybe drag him home pronto.