![]() "This has important implications for our understanding of the nutritional benefits of meat-eating among primates, and highlights the need for future studies that measure the nutritional content of specific tissues and examine which are preferentially consumed or shared," the study authors concluded.Īnd when it comes to meat eating, it's not just other primates that chimps find delicious they've been known to feast on rival chimpanzees, too. The chimps killed and consumed adult monkeys, on the other hand, using various methods, though they were most likely to begin these meals with the viscera - internal organs in the body's main cavities - which were easier to access than the adult brains. In the photo on the right, he uses his right hand to hold the monkey down, and consumes muscle from the inner thigh of the right hind leg. In the photo on the left, he holds the carcass in his left hand, and sucks the brain from the skull. Screen captures show videotaped meat-eating by an adult male chimpanzee in the Kasakela community at Gombe National Park, Tanzania. "Twice, we observed the possessor sucking on the head, presumably extracting the brain," the scientists wrote. Whenever a chimp caught a young monkey, they all typically used a similar method to kill and eat them, biting down on the head and pulling hard, "apparently trying to remove the body from the skull," according to the study. For adult monkeys, the chimps also were interested in the brains, but they cracked the skulls first only 44 percent of the time. ![]() Prior research suggested that chimps found monkey brains to be especially desirable the scientists cited a chimpanzee study from 1973 that noted, "The brain is the only organ for which marked preference is regularly shown, and the eating of brain tissue is always a slow, meticulous procedure with a definite undertone of enjoyment."įor the new study, the team recorded 29 incidents of monkey-eating by eight chimpanzees, and found that if the monkey was a juvenile, the chimps first went for the head 91 percent of the time. They also contain certain fatty acids that are absent from plants and are known, at least in humans, to be important for brain function and for lessening the damage from some diseases, the study authors reported. Humle thinks that such violence may be more likely to occur in larger groups, where there is more competition for resources.Brains, especially mammal brains, are especially high in fat. The baby chimp may simply have been a source of nutrition to the adult that snatched it, says Nishie.Īt any rate, infanticide and cannabilism are extremely rare among chimpanzees, says Hulme. “I work with a chimp community in West Africa, and I have never witnessed any cases,” she says. And female chimpanzees have also been spotted killing the infants of other females when resources like food are scarce, says Humle. This allows them to mate with the mother, and to have more of their own offspring in the group. Male animals of many other species are known to kill young infants that aren’t related to them. ![]() In fact, when the female chimp did subsequently have another baby (pictured above), she disappeared for a month. “I would predict that she would go on ‘maternity leave’ next time,” she says. In this case, the mother may not yet have had a chance to learn about “maternity leave” if it was her first pregnancy, says Tatyana Humle at the University of Kent, UK. He says that his observation provides an obvious clue as to why chimpanzee mothers tend to hide away to give birth. This is the first time anyone has reported seeing a newborn chimpanzee cannibalised in this way, says Nishie. The researchers found him around 1½ hours later, sitting up a tree and eating the infant from the lower half of its body. ![]() So Nishie and his colleague Michio Nakamura were surprised when, at around 11 am one December day, a female member of the chimpanzee group they were observing began to give birth in front of the 20 other members.Īs soon as the baby was out – and before the mother had even had a chance to touch it – the baby was snatched away by a male member of the group, who then disappeared into the bush. ![]()
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