(ScienceAlert) - In the first controlled study of its kind, researchers in the US have found that prosimian primates – represented by two aye-ayes and a slow (potentially slurring) loris – prefer their alcoholic beverages as strong as possible, thank you very much.

In feeding experiments, the three animals – two aye-aye lemurs called Morticia and Merlin, and their drinking buddy, Dharma the slow loris – showed they could discriminate between alcohol of different concentrations, but liked the strong stuff best.

Before you dob in the researchers to some ethics committee for intentionally spiking the animals' drinks, the scientists weren't trying to get these critters drunk.

Nope, the team from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire was looking to investigate what kind of fermented foods the animals are attracted to in their diets, to help understand how alcohol digestion works with naturally fermented nectars, saps, and fruits.

"The prevailing assumption is that alcohol is toxic, negatively affecting motor control, survival, and fitness," lead researcher Samuel Gochman told Discovery News.

"However, calories are scarce in the environment, and alcohol is a rich source of calories for primates with high metabolisms, so there may be nutritional benefits to consuming moderate amounts of alcohol that outweigh the costs, especially if a species has evolved a digestive system that can break it down hyper-efficiently, as ours does."

Aye-ayes are nocturnal lemurs native to Madagascar that live off eating grubs, but during the wet season they spend up to 20 percent of their feeding time sucking nectar from a primitive plant called the traveller's tree (aka Ravenala). In the lab, the researchers had to mock up the next best cocktail.

"Since we didn't have access to such flowering trees for the study, instead, we tested whether aye-ayes are attracted to alcohol in a nectar-simulating solution of sucrose," Gochman explains in a press release.