![]() ![]() “Our results reinforce behavioural observations of male-dominated hunting and meat eating in adult Taï chimpanzees, suggesting that sex differences in food acquisition and consumption may have persisted throughout hominin evolution, rather than being a recent development in the human lineage”, says Christophe Boesch, who directs the Department of Primatology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. This result supports behavioural observations on hunting prowess and meat consumption gathered by Christophe Boesch and his team in the Taï National Park over a 30-year period. “Although both adult males and females, as well as juveniles, derive their dietary protein largely from daily fruit and seasonal nut consumption, our data indicate that some adult males also derive a large amount of dietary protein from hunted meat”, says Geraldine Fahy of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. The result: Meat eating among some of the male chimpanzees is significant enough to result in a marked isotope signal detectable on a short-term basis in their hair keratin and long-term in their bone collagen. Subsequently, the researchers determined the nitrogen isotope values for male and female chimpanzee bone collagen and hair keratin. These environmental samples also included components of the chimpanzees’ diet, such as fruits and seasonal supplements of nuts, ants and termites, and colobus monkey. Researchers analysed a wide range of environmental samples from Taï National Park, Côte d’Ivoire, to construct an isotopic baseline of the chimpanzee habitat. © MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology/Christophe Boesch ![]()
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