How do chimpanzees eat in the wild? Are they vegan or do they eat animals?

Question

How do chimpanzees eat in the wild? Are they vegan or do they eat animals?

Answer 1

Chimps eat a plant-centered diet with occasional meat intake.

Answer 2

They are Omnivorous. They eat plants, fruits, insects and small animals.

They have also been known to practice Cannibalism.

Answer 3

They eat tourists

Answer 4

they do eat other chimps..and i dont see one single vegetarian or vegan moaning about them...i mean they dont need to with all the vegetaion but they clearly want to eat meat....so it isnt just humans who eat meat when they dont need to...but why is it only humans are attacked for eating meat...with the usual.."your sick" "your inhuman".....

piscespet...your right...they dont run factory farms...but would you like to know how they kill other chimps...the bite and scratch the other to death and bash thier heads in....hmmm does that sound humane????????...or quik....or painless...nope yet i dont see 1 vegetarian or vegan moaning...especially since they dont need the meat

Answer 5

They will eat meat if it available, but I don't think that they run factory farms where animals are tortured for them to eat.

Answer 6

Permaculture Bella has nailed this one. Check out and compare chimpanzee and human dentistry, digestive systems and diseases. Locamotion is another key issue that Bella touched on when hunting prey.

Lions eat meat, it makes about as much sense to compare human nutrition with chimps or lions as it does with comparing humans nutrition with plants. E.g. Arabidopsis thaliana genes  (a weed) are extremely similar or identical to human genes linked to certain illnesses.

So what is the next argument, we are like plants so why should we eat plants?

Answer 7

Chimps are known to eat their enemies ,such as other chimps from competitive groups ,after a battle for territory

They will also eat rodents, birds or lizards when pressed

when they are in a normal rich ecosystems where there is plenty of space and food,their main diet is fruits ,nuts ,some leaves ,

and many insects,such as locust ,grasshoppers ,beetles

Also grubs and worms

They can be seen sticking sticks into ant hills and then l**k of the ants ,

So they are total omnivores like us only more so.

How did humane ever become a positive word

i would have thought it should mean the opposite

humane does not sound very good ,torture ,slow deaths in traps,starvation ,skinning alive is what humans do

Chimps simply bite and bash each other to death

When eco systems are damaged like in the last part of the answer on---------How are trees etc

In Carioni Valley in Venezuela etc.

http://byderule.multiply.com/journal/ite...

anything can happen like Cannibalism for survival not just for war ,the monkeys here were howler monkeys

Answer 8

I assume that by this question in this section you are suggesting that human physiology is very similar to that of  chimpanzees so as such, we should follow a diet similar to a chimpanzee?

If this is not the case, then this question properly belongs in Y!A's zoology section . If this is the case then there are many fatal flaws in your argument.

If you do not have a long attention span, move on, because this is going to be a long answer as I have seen variations of this question many times and I want to use Jane Goodall's critique  of Katharine Milton's work to firmly put this myth to bed.

Fatal errors:

Trying to make comparisons between humans and chimpanzees. This stems from erroneous over identification of the similarities in physiology and chromosomes between humans and chimpanzees, which totally ignores the most basic scientific evidence, biology, biological processes and the way man has changed his diet through cultural practice. Then it leads to erroneously trying to connect a 'natural human diet' with that of a chimpanzee and making incorrect assessments as to what a chimpanzee naturally eats.

Chimpanzee diets are well researched (see Goodall and Conklin references below). The proportion of flesh/insects in their diet is very small. Studies by Goodall and Conklin show by time that about (4 - 5.4%) is flesh/insects. This figure (Goodall 4% insects, meat 1.4% ) is largely made up by insects which is largely a social activity, not for nutritional gain as the energy expended to catch these termites by fishing far outstrips the energy gained. Termite fishing (the main source of insects that made up the 4% of the diet) is a highly seasonal, opportunistic activity (carried out in the month of November), it is NOT part of their daily diet. It is a cultural activity, not a nutritional need for calories. SOME groups of chimpanzees termite fish, others do not, if it was a nutritional need it would be seen across all chimpanzee cultural groups AND it would be eaten on a daily/weekly basis. So as that can now be dismissed as being nutritionally insignificant we return to the Meat.

Please note MEAT makes up only 1.4% of their diet which in any statistical study or analysis would be considered as quantitatively unimportant. In longitudinal studies it has been found that 90% of all kills were by males and as the females rarely hunt they receive a share in return by begging only after she allows him to mate with her. The importance of meat is that it is used as a political tool, which can also be seen by the way it is distributed within the group.  On rare occasions chimps do eat and kill a baby chimp. So if you follow this argument to its conclusion, humans should kill and eat their babies, meat should only make up 1.4% of the human diet but females should only receive meat by begging for it and allowing the giver to mate with her!

But for the sake of this Answer and to make it easier to point out fatal flaw No 2 lets PRETEND that the 1.4% of Meat in the diet is significant and totally ignore reality that this 1.4% is nutritionally insignificant and their diet is made up from  69% fruit, 25% leaves and 6% seeds. To do this we have to totally ignore the most elemental human and chimpanzee biology and biological processes. We also have to ignore the way that chimps 'eat' meat; they put the meat between leaves and chew extracting the juices, these sandwiches are then, most commonly, discarded and not actually swallowed at all. Proteins and fats are much easier to obtain from nuts and seeds. When chimps do swallow these sandwiches there is a high presence of undigested (so unassimilated) meat in their f***s.

We then have to ignore that we, humans, are NOT chimps. We also do not have: The biology to eat meat or the complex digestive chemistry, absorptive, transportive, and assimilative biochemistry, the tooth structure, claws, the ability to outrun other animals, or the instinct. When was the last time you actually ran outside and with your hands and teeth actually caught an animal, tore it to pieces with your hands and teeth and then ate it RAW? There is overwhelming epidemiological evidence that meat and dairy consumption are key causal factors in many of man's degenerative diseases.

To suggest that humans are like chimpanzees and should therefore eat a diet high in meat is just totally erroneous it ignores overwhelming evidence to the contrary and almost all accepted scientific data to date.

Answer 9

They eat mostly plants supplemented with some meat.

I saw a documentary once where a group of chimpanzees killed and ate a small monkey.

http://www.okczoo.com/exhi_grea_chim.htm