After reading more about Jane Goodall, apparently she was one of the first scientists to document that chimpanzees were not vegetarian.
In fact, 40% of their overall hunt from the year is caught in the dry season. Meat total only still comprises their diet 3%-- however that includes the whole year-- even their 'hunting' season. Apparently they mostly hunt in packs since they on their own really only have a 30% chance of catching something, but in large numbers (10+) they can usually always get something.
A main food for them are young red colobus monkeys. They hunt by catching them and banging them around.
It seems like a very brutal way to go, however, it's interesting that they don't actually hunt with their canines, like most of us think they do. Yet, their teeth would be of significance when having to separate the parts.... I won't go any more descriptive than that.
I learned about this through this article:
http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~stanford/chimphunt.html
I was curious, what their conclusions were about chimps and eating meat.
In this particular article, the author correlates chimps eating habits with what our ancestors may have eaten, since at one point the chimps and our human line met some, 4.4 million years ago.
I find this correlation to be not really lined up logically.
The first assumption is that Chimpanzees have not evolved over the past 4.4 million years.
This is like saying, that the food habits of animals typically don't change, ever.
I find this claim to not be in alignment with what we have currently observed within the field of science today. Organisms to tend to change. Perhaps some for better, perhaps some for worse, and maybe some occurrences are completely neutral. If we look at humans, our food has shifted tremendously over even the past 50 years. If there are still some sort of people living on earth in 4.4 million years, can you imagine them eating a double cheeseburger with fry sauce? Probably not. Not saying that it isn't possible, it just doesn't seem likely, especially as we don't even know what we ate 4.4 million years ago. But we can see that the foods we have eaten as cultures and societies has significantly changed over time, especially with transmigration and meeting of new cultures and food and integration. Most people in India however would never guess that the chili pepper, the beloved chili of India, isn't actually from India. There was a time in their history of cuisine that their foods weren't spicy.
If we choose to take a look at, for example the blue whale. Before we started polluting our oceans, they ate plankton. Today they ingest more plastic than they do plankton unfortunately.
If evolution could do anything to save these species while fish and plankton populations are plummeting, it would favor them or any other sea creature at this point to evolve to eat plastic. As far as our science shows, this is how we evolved. Take for example, in the beginning when the earth was filled with CO2, green life started flourishing off of this component in the atmosphere, yet because of how much they actually flourished, oxygen then became a new abundant component for the next organism to figure out how to use.
Anyway, what I am trying to say is, that, to think that chimpanzees have kept the same diet throughout the ages and generations, doesn't seem accurate.
But for a moment, let's assume for some bizarre reason, that chimps have actually been able to maintain not only the exact taste preferences and food consumptions throughout the million of years. As well as their speed, quickness, dexterity, eyesight... etc etc. -- to catch the animals.
On top of that they would have also have had to maintain their exact hunting traditions of seasonal hunting... (also assuming that 4.4 million years ago the seasons were also identical, the plant life was identical and the water availability as well)
As well their close knit family bonds and communal life. Okay, great, we've established that in 4.4 million years, this was all exactly the same.
So the second assumption that he makes, is that chimps eat this way for nutritional reasons. This is at best, an educated guess. We really can't say more or less on this whether we know for sure that A. They show serious signs of nutrient deficiency when they aren't eating meat. and B. Their social behaviors, traditions and customs have no influence on their hunting meat.
From the article it seems clear that A. They hunt in groups and B. They hunt during the dry season (which perhaps it's true that there is less fruit (their main food) at this time to effectively subsist on) and when the females are fertile. (which I'm not sure how frequently this occurs for them)
Without really gathering statistical evidence on any of these assumptions, it's hard to say what may be the real driving factor for the chimps.
Jane Goodall only spoke about their complex social communities, could it not be possible that this has become a tradition for these primates. Some social obligation or rite.
The author states how our genes are the most similar to chimp genes out of all the animals.
So why should it be any more likely that we are more like them, than they are like us?
Because if you look at the dynamics of human interaction, most of what we do, is based on our social surrounding. The only times that we so call, 'misbehave' is usually when society dejects us. This is when we get put into health centers or prisons in some cases.
There have been few individuals who have been able to do the 'thing' that they feel is 'morally correct' when being told the opposite by loved ones or authority figures or peers. However, these events typically lead to the individual being punished, 'thrown' away, dejected, killed and sometimes in the rare event, become famous for it.
Instead of saying that we must be like chimps, could chimps be actually just like us?
We eat foods all the time that aren't good for us. We love foods that we know we wont feel good after. Take a look at the number of alcoholics or binge eaters.... the sales of junk food. We know that these don't have any health benefit. So why do we do it?
Maybe we feel that chimps are living in the wild, and since that's where we used to live, that that's why they must hold the answers to what we are supposed to eat.. since we have become so disconnected from the earth and it's plants that we can't walk outside and even tell whether that weed growing by the fence of our yard is edible or not.
Okay, so this is fair argument.
At the same time, just because it comes straight off a tree, without the use of processes to make things more 'tasty', doesn't always make it healthier.
It might be by chance that that chimpanzee got high off of a mushroom. But, with living in the wild for so long, would they not be able to know the difference?
Also, sometimes eating habits have more to do with, ease, comfort and hunger.
The days that we eat the biggest load of unhealthy items, were probably the days we were the hungriest. Or, I guess the monkey's have it right, when us women are on our menstrual cycles. We can have a tendency to crave all sorts of things.
Craving doesn't necessarily mean nutritious.
Unless you are craving a carrot, which probably doesn't happen that often.. if ever.
Meat has a lot of calories, fat and will fill you up quicker than leaves.
And if those female chimps are getting after their mates for not having enough to eat... it just so may be the case.
Not to humanize our chimp relatives.. but don't we attempt to chimpanize humans all the time? Letting their behavior excuse ours?
We also can't forget that they eat most of their calories from fruit. It's pretty hard to justify our current mass consumptions of meat, and all animal product foods from chimps when overall, their diet is only 3% animal food in the whole year!
That comes to a whopping total of 33 meals out of the year that have meat in them. A little over a month. 3% of (3 meals a day times 365 days a year) = 32.5
If meat was as essential to our diet as mainstream media would like us to believe..... it doesn't seem like 33 meals would be enough right?
What about the rest of the 332 days and 996 meals?
Anyway, I'd like to see if 10 guys could go out and chase down a rabbit with their bare hands.... have them bring their kids and see if this doesn't break the kids heart.
Maybe we happen to share 98% of the same genes with chimps, but that doesn't mean that chimps=humans.
It's also assuming that among that 2% of gene share, it's the sharing of exact same nutritional needs. As well as brain capacity, right? Not saying that chimps are any less intelligent than humans, just basically in our ability to use tools to calculate what our needs could or would be. Chimps as far as we know, don't use tools to calculate nutritional nuances among their societies.
Unlike chimps, we have tools to collect our observations from across the world and throughout time and generations to draw conclusions. We have found ways of preventing and observing reasons for diabetes, heart disease, cancer, allergies etc. Unfortunately these happenings aren't as well documented by mainstream because funding typically doesn't come from some, veggie campaign. However there are really amazing documented cases like the china study, that in my mind do us a lot better to look at, than trying to observe from our closest relative and connecting that to our relatives 4.4 million years ago.
Anyway, plus the fact that many of us are very sensitive to the slaughter of animals. Even talking to people who have killed animals, many of whom expressed sadness in doing so. We don't need to necessarily go back or justify what we do. Simple observation of our own species today, should be more than enough information. How do you feel when you eat certain foods? Do you have chronic pain or conditions, have you ever tried eating different foods for more than a month or a year consecutively? If not, give it a go, in my opinion, it's the best way to do research.
That's all.
:)
