Re: Tim

Chimpanzee Hunting Behavior and Human Evolution
American Scientist Magazine

http://www.sigmaxi.org/amsci/articles/95articles/Stanford-full.html

Excerpt:

"In the early 1960s, when the British primatologist Jane Goodall first observed wild chimpanzees hunting and eating meat in Gombe National Park, Tanzania, it was widely believed that these animals were strict vegetarians. Skeptics suggested that the diet of the Gombe chimpanzees was aberrant. Others suggested that the quantity of meat the chimpanzees ate was trivial. After more than 30 years of research, however, it is now clear that meat is a natural part of the chimpanzees' diet. Indeed, hunting has been observed at most of the other sites where chimpanzees are studied across central Africa. And, it turns out, a chimpanzee community may eat several hundred kilograms of meat in a single year."

"The role of hunting in the lives of the earliest hominids was probably as complex and politically charged as it is in modern chimpanzees. The early hominids may even have been important predators in their ancient forest ecosystems. When we ask the question, "when did meat become an important part of the human diet?" we should look well before the evolutionary split between apes and human beings in our own family tree."


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