Ryan Chapin wrote:
> "chimpanzees, like other primates, eat a mainly vegetarian diet. Dr.
> Jane Goodall, whose work with chimpanzees represents the longest
> continuous field study of any living creature in science
> history, says
> chimpanzees often go months without eating any meat
> whatsoever. Indeed,
> she says, "The total amount of meat consumed by a chimpanzee during a
> given year will represent only a very small percentage of the overall
> diet."
> From: http://www.foodrevolution.org/askjohn/30.htm
>
It's ironic that you mentioned Jane Goodall, Ryan, as her research--in which
she observed chimpanzees hunting and eating meat (not to mention insects and
other non-plant foods)--forced scientists to reclassify chimpanzees as
omnivores. Before that they were regarded as herbivores and frugivores. So
chimps were once thought to eat a nearly completely vegetarian diet. They
are now recognized as eating a small, but significant amount of non-plant
foods. The key word in the text you cited is MAINLY. Not totally vegetarian,
MAINLY (meaning omnivores, not herbivores). Based on Goodalls observations,
most chimpanzees apparently eat at least some raw meat every year, so their
dentition must be sufficient to do so, else how do they manage to do it? And
if chimps can hunt and eat raw meat, australopithecines surely could have
managed it. It would also be news to the Plains Indians and Greenland Inuit
Eskimo that humans are not designed to eat meat, because they know that just
a century or so ago their people ate little else.
From: Hunting, Chimpanzee Central, The Jane Goodall Institute,
http://www.janegoodall.org/chimp_central/chimpanzees/behavior/hunting.asp
One of the first and most significant discoveries made by Jane Goodall was
that chimpanzees hunt for and eat meat. During her first year she observed a
male chimp, David Greybeard, an adult female, and a juvenile eating what
Jane realized was a young bushpig. Before this, it had been assumed that
chimpanzees ate only fruit and leaves.
On that first occasion it was not clear whether the chimpanzees had caught
and killed the prey, or merely come upon a carcass. But a short time later
Jane actually observed the hunting process when a group of chimpanzees
attacked, killed, and ate a red colobus monkey that had climbed high into a
tree. The hunters covered all available escape routes while one adolescent
male crept up after the prey and captured it, whereupon the other males
instantly rushed up and seized parts of the carcass.
Successful hunters typically share some portion of their kill with other
group members in response to a variety of begging behaviors. Most of the
captured animal is eaten, including the brain. Meat is a favored food item
among chimpanzees, but does not make up more than two percent of their
overall diet."
From: Habitat, Chimpanzee Central, The Jane Goodall Institute,
http://www.janegoodall.org/chimp_central/chimpanzees/behavior/habitat.asp
[Chimpanzees] are omnivores, and eat not only fruits, nuts, seeds, blossoms,
and leaves, but many kinds of insects and occasionally the meat of
medium-sized mammals. Chimpanzees, like humans, have such catholic tastes
that they are able to live in a wide variety of habitats, unlike gorillas
and orangutans which have more specialized diets in the wild.
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